Liminal spaces where urban and rural areas meet, edgelands are defined by their contrasts and contradictions. Man-made infrastructure, untamed nature, and entropy all coexist in these spaces, sometimes in unique and unexpected ways. Perhaps it is an apt metaphor for music that blurs the lines between melody & experimentation while blending traditional acoustic instruments with electronic textures and unconventional techniques as we find on these recent releases from CMF, L’Eveil, Seabuckthorn, and Yadayn.
CMF – If We’re Apart, I’m Somewhere Missing You
https://lnk.to/CMF-Saesori-Sounds
As lead guitarist and co-founder of Kings of Leon, Matthew Followill has played on stages around the world and seen albums attain multi-platinum success while garnering billions of streams. That makes the quiet, eclectic nature of his CMF solo project all the more remarkable. It debuts this year with If We’re Apart, I’m Somewhere Missing You, a 26-track opus that languidly meanders through ambient textures and folktronica with tinges of Americana and psychedelia and a cinematic feel. Pieces like “National Treasure” feel like fully realized songs while others like “Room Song” or “Soap Opera” serve more as vignettes or whimsical sonic experiments. Even with its sprawling nature there is an underlying sprit that gives the album cohesion and warmth which makes for decidedly pleasant and immersive listening.
The idea for making this music came from the joy of creating and experimenting with everything I’ve collected over the years. I wanted it to reflect what I gravitate to as a listener; organic instrumentation blending with ambient textures. It’s personal and instinctive, inspired by long days on the road where time loses meaning and the world feels cinematic, atmospheric and immersive. Created without agenda or expectation, it’s music that lives in the space between coming and going, made for daydreaming with nowhere to be for a while, letting your thoughts drift somewhere between memory and possibility
Matthew Followill (aka CMF)
If We’re Apart, I’m Somewhere Missing You was released June 19, 2026, via Saesori Sounds.
L’Eveil-Wars of Abstraction
Bandcamp (digital) | Website (LP/digital)
L’eveil is the acoustic fingerstyle project of Ohio-based guitarist Matthew Nichols. The name, which translates to awakening, is inspired by filmmaker Werner Herzog’s documentary “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” which explores the discovery of some of the oldest known human paintings on earth, hidden for millennia within a French cave. A similar spirit of immersive exploration is at the heart of the four tracks that comprise Wars of Abstraction. A skilled and expressive player that traditional guitarists will no doubt appreciate, Nichols nevertheless takes an unconventional approach here by embracing open tunings and drawing from elements of progressive rock, metal, folk, and contemporary instrumental music to create compositions that are as imaginative as they are intricate.
The album traces back to a prolific period of writing that goes back roughly five years during which time Nichols developed a friendship with Nathanael Larochette of Canadian chamber folk project Musk Ox who eventually took on the role of producer and advisor as the body of work grew into what would become no less than ten albums worth of material. On the evidence of Wars of Abstraction, we are at the beginning of an epic journey indeed.
Wars of Abstraction was self-released June 26, 2026, on vinyl LP & digital.
Seabuckthorn – Never the Same River
https://seabuckthorn.bandcamp.com/album/never-the-same-river
Over nearly two decades of music as Seabuckthorn, guitarist Andy Cartwright has always managed to unlock something untamed from his instruments that seemingly taps into the ancient origins of the very wood and steel from which they are made. And while “a plethora of battle-scarred guitars” remain his core toolset, Cartwright has continued to find new ways to evolve the project in new and interesting directions. With last year’s A Path Within a Path (Laaps), he leaned into more rhythmic & percussive elements, a trend which he extends to his latest album for the Lost Tribe Sound imprint.
No one ever steps in the same river twice, for they are not the same person, and it is not the same river.
For Never the Same River, Cartwright actually began many of the tracks by capturing simple DIY beats using an assemblage of percussive objects from hand percussion to kitchen pans. These were then fragmented and reshaped into rugged, cinematic soundscapes which often paradoxically sound earthy and otherworldly at the same time, especially when blended with his bowed acoustic and resonator guitars. It is an approach which embodies and embraces the metaphor of the title. Seabuckthorn has never been about cozy listening. Cartwright’s soundscapes are wild and sometimes forbidding places, but what makes them so intriguing is that you are always likely to hear or experience something new each time you listen.
Never the Same River was released June 19, 2026, on limited edition CD & digital by Lost Tribe Sound. The album is part of the label’s Moss & Melee series.
yadayn – Huis
https://yadayn.bandcamp.com/album/huis
For his fifth album as yadayn, Gowaart Van Den Bossche chose a simple word for the title but one that is dense with meaning. Huis, which means house in Dutch, is an album that Gowaart says he carried with him longer than any of his previous releases. Each piece from concise guitar sketches to epic long form excursions bears sonic markers originating in the various homes in which he has made music over the years while some of the compositional fragments have origins tracing back further than the yadayn project itself.
All of the material carries some distinctive sonic ambiance of the different houses in which I recorded. The muffled warmth of my first London house coexists with the airy space of my Brussels flat, while the mix was defined by the positioning of the speakers in my current Parisian home. The cranky detuned piano I lived with for two years coexists with the guitars and ukulele that have accompanied me on every move, while old organ parts recorded in my parents’ former home mingle with those recorded on a vintage Italian organ I picked up in Brussels.
Gowaart Van Den Bossche (aka yadayn)
More broadly, the title also embraces the concept of home and hands (yadayn derives from the Arabic word for two hands) as dual symbols that define the whole spirit of the project which Gowaart describes as being centered around “a focus on the physicality of the musical creation, the emotional and intellectual labor that goes into it”. All of this context helps prime the listener to get the most enjoyment from the stunning musical journey the album offers. Beautiful, evocative guitar work remains at the core while the sonic world of yadayn is expanded here with piano, ukelele, organ, and other instruments played by guest musicians including double bass, violin, French horn, and harp.
Huis was released August 14, 2026, on digital, CD, and (for the first time) limited-edition vinyl LP.
