‘The Drift’ is the thirteenth studio album by the American solo artist Scott Walker. It was released in May 2006 and reached number 51 on the UK Album Chart. No singles were released from the album.

Apart from composing the soundtrack to the film ‘Pola X’, the album was Walker’s first studio album in eleven years and only his third studio album since the final disbanding of the Walker Brothers in 1978.

Walker composed the songs for the album slowly over the eleven years soon after the release of 1995’s ‘Tilt’, beginning with ‘Cue’, the longest song to complete, up until the album’s
recording.

An early version of ‘Buzzers’ was premièred at the Meltdown Festival on 17 June 2000 under the title ‘Thimble Rigging’.

The album was recorded over a period of 17 months at Metropolis Studios in Chiswick, London, with the orchestra recorded in one day at George Martin’s Air Studio in Hampstead, London. Receiving good reviews from critics the album was released on CD and double LP, and the artwork for the album was designed by Vaughan Oliver at v23, with assistance from Chris Bigg and photography by Marc Atkins.

Despite its complexity, every twist and turn of ‘The Drift’ is absolutely compelling. Taken as a whole, the fragments, details and sensations within it seem to add up to an overarching sense of despair. You can even hear it in Walker’s voice, no longer the self-possessed baritone of old but here sounding frayed and tormented. It’s as if he’s wracked by a vision of true horror; a fascism wrought by humanity on itself, not through a sudden attack of mania but as a subtle, almost imperceptible shift in the norm through shades of cruelty and discomfort.

Finally available on vinyl again.