Rival Consoles share the propulsive and pitch-shifted “Jupiter” today. Check it out if you need to air your head out. There’s something to be said about a palette cleanser coming from unexpected sources.
Rival Consoles, UK producer Ryan Lee West, will release his ninth studio album, Landscape from Memory on July 4 via Erased Tapes and today shines a light on his summerly new single “Jupiter“.
On the track, West said “At the heart of this piece is a call and response. The main idea is changing but the response is always the same, this is connected to life and nature.
I wanted the music to feel like materials, bending, distorting, shimmering, colourful shards of glass and metal. To me it feels like the sun touching objects with it’s warmth and power.
The work is titled Jupiter and references an early work of mine called ‘Helios’ and ‘Voyager’ which are all connected to our place in the universe.”
West continues his pre-release tour with a New Zealand live debut and an exclusive appearance at Dark Mofo in Tasmania before returning to Europe for shows in Milan, Rome and South Facing at Crystal Palace Bowl in London. Further European and Asian live dates to follow for the autumn and winter months, followed by a return to North America in 2026.
Tour dates:
31.05. Auckland, NZ — Neck of the Woods
06.06. Hobart, AU — Dark Mofo
13.06. Milan, IT — Triennale di Milano
28.06. Rome, IT — Manifesto Fest
16.08. London, UK — South Facing Festival
Tickets available HERE with more dates to be announced.
Rival Consoles has been concurrently in the foreground and background of electronic music since the late 00s; conjuring tense melancholia for Black Mirror soundtracks, playing in front of 10,000 dance fans at Drumsheds, selling out London’s Barbican Hall, and logging an expansive, wandering collection of synth-sculpted albums that explore a myriad different styles and aesthetics—but always with human emotion as their lodestar. Landscape from Memory, the ninth studio LP from the UK producer and musician born Ryan Lee West, finally blossomed following a frustrating fallow year away from the production desk.
For West, having spent the past decade producing and writing in a habitual way, falling out of love with creativity meant a slowing of the clock that makes him tick, a sense of being swallowed whole by some elementary force. However, the time out also made room for his most invigorating record yet.
Partly stitched together from a scrapbook of discarded audio snippets, Landscape from Memory demanded a degree of openness and vulnerability in its assembly. “There is a kind of strange beauty to it because it involves the past, present and future in a very strong way,” offers the Erased Tapes mainstay. He set to work massaging melodic kernels into full tracks, like the skippy, haunted club shuffle of memory-jogging lead single ‘Catherine’, which is dedicated to his partner. “It’s extremely open, just a naked melody on drums, so exposed as an idea… I think because she was so excited by it, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m excited too, actually, I just didn’t realise,” he reflects.
These climatic productions are characterised by their propulsive quality, and driven by West’s own push to step outside his comfort zone, having found inspiration flowing from new and unfamiliar sources. After his self-built Hackney studio suddenly felt too controlled of an environment, West altered course, mapping out tracks away from his desk. To that end, Landscape from Memory is a travelogue of creativity on the move, a collection of postcards from everywhere, and an album defined by its restlessness.
Growing up, West would often mess around with the materials on his parents’ land in the small town of Syston outside of Leicester, hammering nails into wood and “sawing stuff,” which ignited a strong curiosity for making and materials from childhood. He soon found his way into music, starting on the guitar before teaching himself digital production and going on to study music technology at Leicester’s De Montfort University. He later became the first signee to the nascent London label Erased Tapes in 2007, establishing the label’s shorthand for exploratory post-minimalism. IO, his debut album as Rival Consoles, came out in 2009, while his output has since evolved across nearly two decades of activity, from the critically acclaimed 2018 offering Persona to Landscape from Memory’s 2022 predecessor, Now Is.
As a multidisciplinary artist he has always been passionate about imagery and how it relates to and inspires music. His 2020 record Articulation was informed by drawings he made in his sketchbook. He has also been experimenting in various motion media, from programming particle animations in Max MSP to filming and editing daily video clips, and manipulating imagery in Touchdesigner or Blender, which would shape the visual counterpart in his live A/V shows since 2015.
As Rival Consoles, West’s calling card is his ability to channel hope, pain, sadness, and euphoria in one fell swoop, twisting the key in the lock of his internal world and telling stories without words. Crucially, Landscape from Memory is as much about zooming in on the details as it is about seeing past the horizon. Like a saturated photograph or an abstract painting daubed with bright splotches, Landscape from Memory is a riot of colour, an album blazing with a sound-shaper’s renewed love for his craft.
Pre-order album: https://idol-io.ffm.to/landscapefrommemory
