Shackleton is currently readying Departing Like Rivers for release on September 21st via his Woe To The Septic Heart! imprint. Since 2019, the artist has been involved with his project Tunes of Negation with Heather Leigh, Takumi Motokawa, and Raphael Meinhart, and 2020 saw him join forces with the Polish jazz clarinetist Wacław Zimpel for the Cosmo Rhythmatic release Primal Forms. With that said, Departing Like Rivers is only the third solo album for Shackleton and his first in nine years. He explains:
“Unlike much of my work recently, it is not a ‘concept album’ and is without any collaborators. I just wanted to focus on my core sound, really, but without any of the genre tropes that may have been present the last time I made a solo album.“
“Something Tells Me / Pour Out like Water” indeed establishes many of Shackleton’s core sound elements while still offering plenty of surprises. Just over twelve minutes in length, the rhythmically driven track has plenty of low-end ambiance as its bass and drums mood check Jungle and Dubstep with the kind of psychedelic atmospherics that make a Shackleton cut a “heady” affair. As the trip unfolds, though, he gently guides it off the rails as British folk songs make their way into the mix like some strange ghost conjured from the past. Meanwhile, Shackleton melts the matrix into all kinds of tantalizing and mushroomy shapes.
