Marking the start of a new partnership with saxophone player Theo Erskine strengthening the imprint’s artistic reach and sparking ever more creative ideas, Ultrasound is the product of hours and days spent together during the pandemic -hours and days that turned into time spent plotting, planning, and putting in place future musical collaborations and projects when getting together in person became impossible.

Now, all Banger Factory releases are recorded at Theo’s studio in Forest Hill described so eloquently in Oliver Newman’s evocative liner notes.
“The tall south-facing windows frame an arc of daylight around south London’s paling hills. Light lets nothing off the hook. Each ordinary thing we overlook sharpens into life and gets remade with new clarity, definition, and detail. It’s like we’re seeing the familiar view unfold for the first time again – the busy rows of buildings being added to; traffic pushing homeward under a strengthening smile of moonlight as the day declines. Those trees.”

The recording itself captures the zeitgeist of a unique moment in time when musicians starved of creative, collaborative music-making during the pandemic met again and each track is suffused with the palpable joy yet tinged with reflection.

Inspired by a shared love of Thelonious Monk’s ‘Live At The It Club’, opener ‘IT’ encapsulates the sound, the emotions, and the energy of that rediscovered togetherness better than words could express.

‘The Day After Tomorrow’ promises respite from a hangover, ‘The Return of Johnny Bravo’ characterises a re-emergence in a whirlwind of excitement. ‘June’ describes the glinting skyline of a world-reopened and ‘The Loneliest’ explores how peace is drawn from inward sources in the loneliest of times.