Taking their name from a coastal flower, Golden Samphire Band is a new project from brothers Mik and Rich Hanscomb and fellow Sussex seaside dweller, Hannah Lewis. Having worked together on tracks for the brother’s previous album as Junkboy (2023’s Littoral States), the three resolved to move forward as one with a set of songs that expand on those earlier ideas—maritime suburbia in all its mythical and marvellous mundanity. This time, however, they approach it through a cycle of home-recorded, informed psych-folk-pop-pocket-symphonies. Their debut album, Dream Is The Driver, released on Wayside & Woodland, was recorded at home between 2024 and 2025, with the band handling writing, production, and much of the engineering themselves. The band itself describes it as “psychogeographically-informed” music, meaning it draws heavily on place and environment, particularly the Sussex coast. Across its nine tracks, the tone is reflective and atmospheric, focusing on small, everyday experiences elevated into something slightly surreal or poetic. At times (I dare to say) it recalls a 1960’s psych-folk band gently flirting with dream pop. The title track comes from a phrase used by Rich’s pen friend’s young son to describe pictures of bullet trains he drew from his home in Yokohama. Upon seeing these pictures, Hannah developed the idea into a meditation on movement: municipal transport passing by trees, as well as on aspiration, self-actualisation, and the search for creative agency in what can feel like an artless, screen-mediated world. The result is a suite of songs that are the culmination of three friends’ shared interests and intersecting lives along the Sussex coastline, while also expressing a sense of hope and a beautiful tomorrow. After all, in seaside towns, surf’s never really up…

Frank Rabeyrolles is a discreet and unclassifiable figure on the French music scene, who first gained attention in 2004 with Life Behind the Window, the debut album from his project Double U. His dreamy, hybrid music, oscillating between pop, electronic, and songwriting, astonishes and seduces. He has released a solid succession of albums first under Double U and then Franklin. His creative approach over the years, and now decades, could be seen as a yearning for artistic ritual driven by passion, but also as an existential necessity. At the end of 2011, Frank Rabeyrolles decided to release #8, his first album under his real name. Between Experimental Pop, Lo-Fi Folk, and Ambient, Frank has never wanted or needed to choose. The follow-up comes in 2021 with A Ghost by the Sea, a record that asserts itself as ambient, also endowed with a melodic and contemplative obsession that has been a trademark since his debut. In 2022 and 2023, he composed Boat Songs and Minor Blue, bittersweet, chiaroscuro ballads built around clear and concise guitars, accompanied by Romain Delorme and Sébastien Pasquet in a Guitar/Bass/Drums Trio. In early 2024, Frank Rabeyrolles returned to solitary work in the home studio, cultivating a gentle schizophrenia between tenderness, sonic roundness, echoes, spleen, and hope. The album In Conversations was released in February 2025 on Araki Records. After two albums recorded in a trio/quartet format, this new album marks a return to a certain pop bricolage and organic work created around layers of guitars. His new stunning album, Slow, was released in February on the French label Too Good To Be True.

Fran Carlyon has been writing acoustic based songs in the folk tradition for a number of years now. He records them in threadbare fashion in as few takes as possible, incorporating synths and electronics to add light and shade. In his view, capturing the initial spark of inspiration is key, as it conveys the message and meaning in the purest possible way.
After a batch of digital singles, his debut mini album, Home Truths, was released 6th February via the wonderful Manchester/Brighton based label YYZ Records. Beyond his songs, Fran is a kind of musical soul brother to us, sharing our values and taste in true independent music and being very active in the underground independent scene: he writes for HeavyMetalKids.uk and DJs at Ship Full Of Bombs, Southend’s alternative radio station.