Vinyl’s revival is all the rage now with the format shifting its highest units since 1990 and indie shops opening around the UK.
However, there is a price to pay, and not just the inflated cost of the format thanks to its still short-run nature. Records are constructed from PVC plastic, one of the most toxic materials on earth.
That’s why the 12” sleeve for ‘Dance Of The Atoms’, the debut album from Glasgow-based act Beautiful Cosmos, contains… nothing.
Well, aside from a download code, and beautiful full-size artwork by singer Anna Miles.
It’s all part of the Doughnut Music project, aiming for more sustainable music releases, and the brainchild of Zoey Van Goey’s Matt Brennan, who formed Beautiful Cosmos with Miles, formerly of Maple Leaves and sometime Belle and Sebastian backing vocalist. The pair worked alongside the likes of Alex Kapranos and Robert Wyatt on a tribute album to Scottish singer Ivor Cutler (Return to H’Yup) and take the name Beautiful Cosmos from one of Cutler’s best-known tracks.
It’s Glasgow that has pulled the (husband and wife) pair together – Brennan originally from Prince Edward Island in Canada before settling in Scotland to work as a Professor of Music. Meanwhile, Miles – drawn to the city as “the home of all the music I like” – hails from Newcastle, and her near-neighbours Peter and David Brewiss – of Sunderland Mercury-nominated act Field Music – handle production dueies on the majority of album tracks (aside from two produced by Frightened Rabbit’s Andy Monaghan).
The band monicker ties in, perhaps obviously with the universe and our place within it, as well as the album’s central theme, summed up in single ‘Midlife’.
The idea of putting out an indie-pop record when approaching middle age, is described by Brennan as “an authentic impulse that simultaneously feels absurd” while the album’s title track looks at a state of one-ness with the universe inspired by watching the Persid meteor showers.
“I like to reflect that it’s so improbable that any life exists at all,” Brennan muses. “And there’s this star so far away. And if we didn’t have it, there’d be no life at all.
“And I don’t know why I’m obsessed with that idea, but it gives me a sense of calm that most things in the world don’t.”
‘Dance Of The Atoms’ is out now. This article originally appeared in the Lancashire Post.
Also chief newshound at Jockrock
- F.O. Machete - 18 April 2025
- Henge - 18 April 2025
- Divorce - 16 April 2025