U - ARCHENFIELD

Label: Lex Records – LEX199LP
Format: Vinyl, LP, 180g Eco Vinyl 
Country: UK
Released: Oct 10, 2025
Genre: Electronic
Style: Ambient, Experimental, Field Recordings, Spoken Word

#20 BEST ALBUMS OF 2025

Pressed on 180g eco vinyl, the album comes with a printed 24-page visual companion that expands on its themes and folk stories through imagery and narrative, echoing the album’s soundscape.

Following the release of ‘Life Isn’t A Fountain?‘ on Lex Records, where archival post-punk met meticulous sample work, mysterious producer U turns their attention to the Herefordshire region of Archenfield, creating an album that feels like auditory time travel.

U has been described as the artist’s artist. Working as an archivist, collagist, and chronicler through careful sonic curation, their output genuinely defies categorisation. Slotting into broad genres such as techno, experimental electronic, ambient, and modern classical, U never fully pledges allegiance to any. Previously releasing on George Fitzgerald’s ManMakeMusic, Where To Now?, Erol Alkan’s Phantasy Sound, Technicolour, and Lex Records, their work has been lauded for its “limitless possibilities.”

Spanning fourteen tracks, ‘ARCHENFIELD‘ incorporates a wide array of recorded material from the local area – traditional music, home recordings, and snippets from film, TV, and YouTube – to construct immersive soundscapes exploring regional identity, memory, and the way English folklore persists, mutates, or fades. The album isn’t a straightforward nod to the past. It demands a slower, deeper and reflective listen, offering an alternative to conventional folk or ambient electronic music.

The opening tracks evoke the dissonant nostalgia of a primary school assembly hall. Crackling pianos, ghostly backing vocals, and a solo child’s voice on ‘Is It A Kind Of Dream?‘ set a subtly unsettling tone, while the hauntological aspects of U’s production – disembodied instruments yearning for presence – permeate the album.

Spectral motifs continue throughout. ‘Avenbury Organist‘ summons the spirit said to haunt Saint Mary’s Church in Bromyard, while ‘Half Moon‘ pairs medieval horns with warped guitars, reflecting on how local history deepens with age. Folklore is treated with both tenderness and irreverence: ‘The Bitter Withy‘ channels a macabre folk tale of childhood transgression, and ‘He’s Found It‘ introduces an eerie, modern-day ghost story via a local historian’s YouTube channel.

Other tracks – ‘Black Vaughan‘, inspired by a haunted War of the Roses squire, and the closing ‘Lost To The Plough‘, which weaves traditional poems with cyclical melodies—highlight U’s fascination with the layers of history embedded in landscape, song, and memory.

‘ARCHENFIELD‘ interrogates how culture is preserved, altered, and lost, offering a deeply personal and strikingly localised portrait of England. U’s work isn’t nostalgic so much as insistently attentive, rewarding those willing to listen closely to the ghosts of a place and its histories.