Birds In The Brickwork is the new instrumental project of self taught multi-instrumentalist and producer Benjamin Thomas Holton, who hails from England’s landlocked Staffordshire. Benjamin is a founding member with Rob Glover of the magnificent epic45, which, in the last two decades, released a series of widely celebrated EPs and albums, inspired by their surroundings and the ever-changing English landscape. He is also the mastermind behind the dream-pop and folk project My Autumn Empire, which released six records (five on his own label Wayside & Woodland and one for Sound In Silence) from 2010 to 2018. Ben has previously worked with July Skies, Bibio, Stephen Jones (Babybird), Hood and Ian Crause (Disco Inferno). As well as playing live with Mick Turner (Dirty Three), The Fauns and Riley Walker. Birds In The Brickwork, his latest solo project, focuses on the idea, which was central to the epic45 concept and poetics, of nature and the inescapable man-made landscape in further ways, via the medium of music and photography. In Novembre 2021 the first Bird In The Brickworks’ project, Twelve Months was out: a collection of twelve tracks, one for each month of the year, to accompany a calendar from Ben Holton’s photography.
Recovery, an album and collection of photographs that document the beginning of the recovery process following a severe back problem, is out now on Wayside & Woodland.

Italian-born Marta Del Grandi is an eclectic singer songwriter gathering influences from near and far to create a unique genre-splicing style, a jazz vocalist originally, now travelling her own unique and unchartered path. Marta studied Jazz Vocals at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, she visited China, then Nepal where she taught at the Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory, before returning to Italy where she unpacked the influences and inspirations she’d soaked up. Re-connecting with old sparring partners and collaborators along the way, she met new like-minded souls and developed a plan that had first been ignited in Kathmandu’s rarefied air where she re-imagined her relationship with music and its with her. From there, songs became soundtracks, patterns emerged, vocals drifted over electronic synths, classical structures and ambient soundwaves ran abreast; strange nuances of texture evolved. Her vocal style matured; became folky, West Coast, ethereal, pronounced, enveloped, exotic, explorative, a chameleon-like presence counter-balancing her music. Marta Del Grandi has studied the fine art of songwriting, drawing from the wonderment of life, she weaves stories of marine fossils at the peak of the Himalayas, myths around precious stones and species on the brink of extinction. Morricone-esque in structure, with a hint of David Lynch, her music is playful and evocative. Signed to Fire Records, she released her debut album for the label, Until We Fossilize, on November 5^th, 2021.