Tom Hobden & Eliot James Present: Roam is the stunning debut, collaborative LP from composers Tom Hobden (Noah and the Whale, Mumford and Sons and Laura Marling) and Eliot James (Kaiser Chiefs, Two Door Cinema Club and Bloc Party).

Having met back in 2007, while working on Tom’s band Noah and The Whale’s top five-debut album, Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down, the pair have been in each other’s orbit for many years. In 2016 they decided to work together again after exchanging demos of orchestral and score material. Roam is the fruits of this collaboration and a fascinating first taste of what Tom and Eliot have in store with this project.

Frustrated by a lack of opportunities for and appreciation afforded to orchestral strings within the world of pop, Tom and Eliot saw no other option but to take things into their own hands. Ambitious from the outset, Roam reflects a shared love of late and neo–Romantic composers, and offers a knowing doff of the cap in the direction of the likes of William Barber, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, as well as more modern, post classical composers such as Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt and Max Richter.

Discussing their intentions for the record sonically, the pair explain:

“True to the album’s name we set out with a hunger for exploring new musical territory. With an orchestra on hand, we gladly lost ourselves at times in the wide plains of English Romanticism but at the same time were ever aware of the here and now, and the importance of forging new lines.”

An undoubted triumph, Roam, set for release on the 16th June via Village Green Recordings is the sound of two artists re-born and their finest work yet.