The Second Chamber (2025)

The Second Chamber was released on 28th June, 2025 - twenty years to the day that Richard began Sustain-Release, the private-press label through which he released a series of pseudonymous albums that focused on the landscape of the north-west of England.

Recorded over a period of four years, The Second Chamber was written for his original ‘broken consort’ of small, handmade and modified stringed instruments. Although produced in absentia, the music nevertheless remains rooted in the landscape of Lancashire’s West Pennine Moors. As noted in Inter-Disinter, this is due in no small part to the private history of the instruments themselves, and their connection to the various moorland locations in which they were previously played.

The music itself represents something of a return to first principles - a concentration on the chance resonances of even the simplest of musical gestures, and a celebration of the life-affirming qualities of music itself.