“You’ve got to die and be reborn between albums,” begins Henry Wade, guitarist for The Orielles, describing the foundations of the band’s fourth studio album, Only You Left. “It comes naturally,” adds singer and bassist Esmé Hand-Halford, “it’s not something we consciously do.”

Through this process of creative renewal, the Manchester-based trio – completed by drummer Sidonie Hand-Halford – have managed to weather a pandemic, defy the fickleness of a trend-led music industry, and emerge, phoenix-like, with something familiarly Orielles, yet altogether different. Recorded in two locations – Hydra and Hamburg – over the summer of 2024, the 11 tracks of Only You Left sees the band consolidate the bold experimentation of their previous LP, Tableau (2022), with a return to the more stripped-back, song-led approach of their early origins.

“There’s nothing more trad than a three-piece,” quips Henry, in reference to the band’s decision to return to their roots as a trio. Originally from Halifax, the Orielles first came to recognition in 2018 with their debut album, the indie-rock Silver Dollar Moment, which is approaching its eighth birthday in February 2026. “These things come in like seven year cycles. So we've come in like a full circle back to a familiar place, just as different people.”

By exploring binaries and contrasts, the Orielles are finding shapes in the chaos and confusion of the world around us – it’s an undertaking that benefits from more than 15 years of close collaboration, driven by friendship and the artistic compulsion to find meaning in music.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Three Halves
Shadow Of You Appears
Tears Are
Embers
Tiny Beads Reflecting Light

Side B
The Woodland Has Returned
All In Metal
You Are Eating A Part Of Yourself
Whenever (I May Not Feel So Close)
Wasp
To Undo The World Itself

“You’ve got to die and be reborn between albums,” begins Henry Wade, guitarist for The Orielles, describing the foundations of the band’s fourth studio album, Only You Left. “It comes naturally,” adds singer and bassist Esmé Hand-Halford, “it’s not something we consciously do.”

Through this process of creative renewal, the Manchester-based trio – completed by drummer Sidonie Hand-Halford – have managed to weather a pandemic, defy the fickleness of a trend-led music industry, and emerge, phoenix-like, with something familiarly Orielles, yet altogether different. Recorded in two locations – Hydra and Hamburg – over the summer of 2024, the 11 tracks of Only You Left sees the band consolidate the bold experimentation of their previous LP, Tableau (2022), with a return to the more stripped-back, song-led approach of their early origins.

“There’s nothing more trad than a three-piece,” quips Henry, in reference to the band’s decision to return to their roots as a trio. Originally from Halifax, the Orielles first came to recognition in 2018 with their debut album, the indie-rock Silver Dollar Moment, which is approaching its eighth birthday in February 2026. “These things come in like seven year cycles. So we've come in like a full circle back to a familiar place, just as different people.”

By exploring binaries and contrasts, the Orielles are finding shapes in the chaos and confusion of the world around us – it’s an undertaking that benefits from more than 15 years of close collaboration, driven by friendship and the artistic compulsion to find meaning in music.

TRACK LISTING

Side A
Three Halves
Shadow Of You Appears
Tears Are
Embers
Tiny Beads Reflecting Light

Side B
The Woodland Has Returned
All In Metal
You Are Eating A Part Of Yourself
Whenever (I May Not Feel So Close)
Wasp
To Undo The World Itself

The Orielles on The Goyt Method: Our concept for The Goyt Method was birthed from our interest in cybernetics, improvisation and experimental electronic music. We wanted to zoom out of ‘Tableau’ (the band’s third album released in 2022) and disconnect all the pieces, rearranging them in new ways to create variations of songs, which encapsulate the whole record. We left this part of the process completely down to chance, adopting an online roulette wheel to choose our stems. This way of creating music was familiar to us from spending a lot of time remixing and record collecting, gaining an invested interest in deep listening and avant-garde electronic music.

The name itself comes from the initial location in which we remixed with Joel Patchett, a wintery and freezing cold Goyt Mill. From here, we coined the term ‘Goytism’ or ‘to Goyt’ which was basically our way of describing the process of repurposing and resampling acoustic sounds through digital production, making them unrecognisable from their original source.

The photograph on the sleeve was taken in winter 2020, our first visit to the Mill studio, our first Goyt session. 

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Tableau 001
2. Tableau 002
3. Improvisation 002
Side B:
1. Tableau 003
2. Tableau 004 

The Orielles have created their first genuinely contemporary record – an experimental double album self-produced in collaboration with producer Joel Anthony Patchett (King Krule, Tim Burgess). In doing so, the Orielles have utilised holistic jazz practices, oblique 21st century electronica, experimental 1960s tape loop methods, otherworldly AutoTuned vocal sounds, the downer dub of Burial, Sonic Youth’s focus on improvisation and feedback, and Brian Eno’s legendary Oblique Strategy cards.

TRACK LISTING

Chromo I
Chromo II
Airtight
The Instrument
The Improvisation 001
Television
Some Day Later
Darkened Corners
Honfleur Remembered
Beam/s
To Offer, To Erase
The Room
By Its Light
Transmission
Drawn And Defined
Stones

On La Vita Olistica (their second-and-a-half album!?), The Orielles take last year’s stellar Disco Volador and bring it back down to earth, reimagining it as a soundtrack which draws as much from la nouvelle vague as New York’s new wave music scene. Full of instrumental detours, maverick synth-led twists, and more pop hooks than you can shake a disco stick at, it’s a less “produced” affair than its shimmering predecessor - those virtuosic guitars, drums à la Can school of jazz-punk-groove, dream-laden vocals, and understated bass gymnastics are all still here though, just clearer and tighter than ever before. There’s something so classic and charismatic about the way they write songs too, calling to mind - but never imitating - the greats of indie songwriting: Edwyn Collins, Laetitia Sadier, Bradford Cox, et al. La Vita Olistica shows the mighty O’s at their most inspired yet - and it’s a beautiful thing to watch.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Eschewing the more dancefloor-ready elements of last years' 'Disco Volador', the Orielles return with the lysergic smudged atmospheres and hazy psychedelic groove of 'La Vita Olistica'. A brilliantly immersive and impeccably performed outing from a band showing their wide range of influence, as well as their deftness crafting those influences into something new and exciting.

Defiant in the face of existential dread, The Orielles were always going to approach their second album with nothing but stellar levels of intent. Disco Volador sees the 4-piece push their sonic horizon to its outer limits as astral travellers, hitching a ride on the melodic skyway to evade the space-time continuum through a sharp collection of progressive strato-pop symphonies.

“Its literal interpretation from Spanish means flying disc but everyone experiences things differently. Disco Volador could be a frisbee, a UFO, an alien nightclub or how you feel when you fly; what happens to your body physically or that euphoric buzz from a great party,” suggests bassist and singer, Esme. “But it is an album of escape; if I went to space, I might not come back.”

Voyaging through cinematic samba, 70s disco, deep funk boogies, danceable grooves and even tripping on 90s acid house, Disco Volador is set to propel The Orielles spinning into a higher zero-gravity orbit. Written and recorded in just 12 months, it captures the warp-speed momentum of their post-Silver Dollar Moment debut album success; an unforgettable summer touring, playing festivals like Green Man and bluedot, and deepening their bond whilst witnessing the sets of their heroes Stereolab, Mogwai, and Four Tet. Disco Volador’s library catalogue vibes stem from a band lapping up and widening their pool of musical discovery whether nodding to Italian film score maestros Sandro Brugnolini and Piero Umiliani, or the Middle Eastern tones of Khruangbin and Altin Gün. “All the influences we had when writing this record were present when we recorded it, so we completely understood what we wanted this album to feel like and could bring that to fruition,” tells drummer, Sid. “This is the sound of where we are at, right now.”

Returning to Stockport’s Eve studios where the band cooked together, went swimming, took walks, and relaxed in the soundwaves of an occasional gong bath, Henry, Sid and Esme called a family reunion under the watchful whisker-twitching of studio cat, Adam (“He was probably a producer in a past life,” they say). With keysman Alex now adding texture through his classically trained know-how, they re-joined engineer Joel, and producer Marta Salogni (Liars, Björk, The Moonlandingz) whose vast expertise of drones, delays and mad effects were so intrinsic to their Disco Volador vision – sketched out by the band in Sharpie doodles on the studio wall. “Marta is so positive, she has a great way of getting the best out of us,” guitarist, Henry tells. “Marta is the 5th Orielle,” affirms Sid. “Because we’d worked together before, we were even tighter; it’s a shared mind-set.” For Marta, the feeling is mutual; “It’s sonic tidying really, the band just do their thing and I work with that.”

Built from instrumentals around the concept of “boogie to space, space to boogie,” Disco Volador’s energy comes from the melodic fission of tension and release. Recurring motifs explore space, not only of earth’s celestial atmosphere, but also what happens within the gaps and how sound manipulation has the power to carry, or displace, its listener. “We like throwing in wide curveballs by taking the music somewhere different then figuring our way back… like jumping off,” says Henry. “Jez from ACR taught us about pauses and that’s massive on this record; space can be the most beautiful part of a song.” In fact, by unleashing the tension with their own smattering of esoteric noise through delay pedal fuckery, the layered poetics on ‘Whilst The Flowers Look’ and ‘Memoirs of Miso’s saxophone stylistics (loaned by Glasgow band Lylo’s Iain McCall), filling voids is exactly what gives the album its magic. “Those unplanned moments are great,” Sid says, “mistakes can become something special. For these next shows we’ll have to change our tech spec up so much!”

At times haunting and unsettling, Disco Volador’s film-like structure flows from fact to fiction. Its tales are culled from waking life as easily as they become a soundtrack for lucid dream sequences. Watching Foley-inspired 70s thriller Berberian Sound Studio whilst recording may account for the album’s dynamic sound effects – created with Eve’s array of instruments plus Henry’s flexatone - a Secret Santa gift from Esme. Lynchian outros capture the album’s thematic dread as they spiral into infinity and pave the way for potential loops, imitating the fades between the songs of the band’s summer DJ sets. Brian Eno-inspired dreams about a rocket-fuelled mission may or may not have inspired ‘Rapid’ or ‘Come Down On Jupiter’ after ideas sunk deeper into their subconscious. “I’d been reading about phenomenology and Czechoslovakian writer Milan Kundera’s ideas about existence; the weight of your own body, what you feel and how that interacts with your surroundings,” hints Esme, at possible inspiration behind the lyrics.

Whilst the future of the world and its current cosmic wasteland might be up in the air, The Orielles’ new album has its feet beating out a much-needed four to the dancefloor. Welcome to Disco Volador; time really does fly when you’re having this much fun.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Wow, no second album worries whatsoever for The Orielles, then! Crashing into our hearts with their supernaturally energised blend of psych, post-punk, dream pop, disco, Tropicalia and good old fashioned indie-pop, this record absolutely does it all. Some of the baggy grooves on their debut have been whipped up to speed; this is a taught, funky, crisp and punchy sound. I’d say it's also a more experimental record, definitely more challenging, but that doesn’t mean the tune count is any lower: these are massive, dead catchy pop songs, designed for the dancefloor but especially the live experience; what a shame that’s been denied them (and us!) in this annus horribilis.

Opening track “Come Down On Jupiter” is a heavily phased and flanged waltz before its driving middle section and grooving outro, whilst elsewhere there’s saxophone, congas, handclaps galore, and an ever burgeoning love affair with Manchester’s very own A Certain Ratio. Lead singer Esme has such a sweet, unaffected voice in which a tiny sense of longing can be detected, though not in any navel gazing way, she’s probably pining to meet somebody out on the astral plain or she’s dreaming of space travel, cosmic connectivity or just another dimension altogether! This is music to get you off your arse alright, the drums and percussion are just incredible throughout, as is the overall production, so tasty, so nuanced, so many flavours. I really think they’re one of our best bands right now.

TRACK LISTING

1 Come Down On Jupiter
2 Rapid
3 Memoirs Of Miso
4 Bobbi's Second World
5 Whilst The Flowers Look
6 The Square Eyed Pack
7 7th Dynamic Goo
8 A Material Mistake
9 Euro Borealis
10 Space Samba (Disco Volador Theme)

Sidonie Hand Halford is a Christmas temp at the Post Office in Liverpool, her younger sister Esme is studying English literature at Manchester, and their friend Henry Wade is preparing to sit his A-levels in Halifax next summer. 

From the first jangling sunshine chords on opening track ‘Mango’, Silver Dollar Moments announces itself as a proper piece of indie pop goodness. Then, across 45 minutes, it takes all kinds of turns, into ESG-ish yips and funk, dreamy-arch harmonies, disco synth-pows and stoner bongos, unsettling submerged voices - with all that and more it still flows like a fountain of indie pop, fresh and catchy and altogether.

Maybe one reason it all coheres so beautifully is that The Orielles are a close-knit unit: two sisters and their best mate. “We met Henry at a house party a few years ago,” says Sid. “I mean, it’s a bit lamer than that sounds. It was a friend of our parents, she was having a 40th birthday party, and we went along, and Henry was there too, with his parents.” They’ve been writing songs together ever since, Esme singing and on bass, Sidonie on drums, Henry on guitar. They’ve played live all over the UK as well as Europe and North America, and this year they signed to Heavenly Recordings and headed into Eve Studios in Stockport.

TRACK LISTING

1. Mango
2. Old Stuff New Stuff
3. Sunflower Seeds
4. Let Your Dog Tooth Grow
5. Liminal Spaces
6. The Sound Of Liminal Spaces (edit)
7. I Only Bought It For The Bottle
8. Henry’s Pocket
9. 48 Percent
10. Borrachero Tree
11. Snaps
12. Blue Suitcase (Disco Wrist)