Ian William Craig returns with a gorgeous new LP of material commissioned to soundtrack ‘Magnesium_173’, an elegant puzzle-based PC game inspired by quantum mechanics.

On double vinyl, the album comprises 12 bold and immersive pieces, totalling 80 mins of new music, with Ian using modular synthesis for the first time. Anything but passive / reserved background sound-beds, it possesses a real weight and power, displaying his peerless power as an improvising composer able to summon and shape the sublime via modified tape decks, electronics and his beautiful voice, forging a unique kind of choral-based, heavily-abrasive take on ambient composition.

Craig has been described by MOJO as “a trained opera singer manipulating analogue recordings of his own voice to conjure up bewitching traceries of phantom arias… creating something elegiac and profound”; by The Guardian as “like a collaboration between Bon Iver and William Basinski”; and by Pitchfork as “like Tim Hecker producing the outré Jónsi Birgisson album many expected but never got.”

This is Craig’s first LP since 2020’s ‘Red Sun Through Smoke’, which saw widespread critical acclaim. His work has been lauded in Pitchfork, Uncut, The Guardian, Mojo, Rolling Stone, NY Times, Q, The Quietus, Clash, 405, Brooklyn Vegan, Line Of Best Fit, Fader, Stereogum, Self- Titled and XLR8R, and has found fans in peers like Max Richter, Thom Yorke and Sigur Rós.

For fans of The Caretaker, William Basinski, Abul Mogard, Aphex Twin, Ben Frost, Tim Hecker, Stars Of The Lid, Fennesz, Juliana Barwick, Lawrence English.