On her return as Austel, Devon-born, London-based artist Annie Rew Shaw treads a different path from the one that saw her receive widespread plaudits for the delicate, luscious piano songs of her 2024 debut album Dead Sea.

Following years as a session musician – performing at festivals such as Glastonbury and touring the UK – Austel’s 2018 debut EP earned praise from BBC 6 Music and The Line of Best Fit, with her 2020 follow-up Cold Love gaining further support from Fresh on the Net, O2 Music and BBC Introducing. In 2024, she released her debut album Dead Sea, a dreamy exploration of loss, recovery and transformation - self-produced and featuring collaborations with Grammy Award-winning engineer Guy Massey. 

Now exploring the folkier intimacies of the guitar for music that’s also in conversation with the field recordings of Jon Hopkins & King Creosote, Adrianne Lenker and Cassandra Jenkins, Austel is developing a very personal sound that she still manages to make feel spacious and open. 

The first track of this new material, The Beach in December, is a gently arresting song that recalls in its smaller details the steps towards acceptance after the premature end of a budding relationship, but on a broader scale draws from a revelatory ayahuasca ceremony that “reignited a lot of childhood memories that I’d completely forgotten” and the idea of mapping out a life from those small fragments of experiences we often disregard.

Sam Bhok
Synth noodler, producer, DJ 
Worldwide FM sound engineer
Bristol via London
contact-
sambhokmusic [at] gmail . com

Pop band from Cardiff, Wales, UK on Elefant Records.
http://www.facebook.com/theschoolband 
http://www.twitter.com/theschoolband
http://www.theschool.bandcamp.com
http://www.instagram.com/theschoolband

Lisa and the F.I.X. is the alter-ego of hyper productive composer Luke Deane. Lisa creates live performance art with songs about emotional transparency and expression. She’s always looking for spaces where raw emotions can be expressed, and for her debut album is joined by Andreas Kühne (Drums) and Uldīs Vitols (Bass) plus a unique ensemble of vibraphone/cymbalom, duduk/ney/double-neck guitar, double-bass panflute and cello.

Accepting festival bookings for 2022/23
Already booked: ReWire

Kit Denison is following