Petrels is the solo project of musician and artist, Oliver Barrett. Since releasing his debut, Haeligewielle, in 2011, Petrels has toured across Europe and shared a stage with the likes of Jóhann Jóhannsson, Tim Hecker, FIRE!, Nate Young (Wolf Eyes), Trouble Books, Demdike Stare, Nadja, and Hans-Joachim Roedelius (Cluster). Working from his home in Somerset, UK, Barrett has released numerous albums through his Floating Limb imprint, as well as mixing and/or mastering hundreds of releases for the likes of Keiji Haino, Loren Connors & Alan Licht, Judith Hamann, Incapacitants, Mette Rasmussen & Sofia Jernberg, Yasunao Tone and more.
Seven years after 2019’s ‘The Dusk Loom’, Petrels finally returns with a pair of new albums, Infangthief and Outfangthief. The first of these releases, Infangthief, was originally written and recorded in 2022, before being reworked in light of a subsequent album, Outfangthief, due to be released later this year.
The two albums act as companion pieces, mirrors revealing facets of the other, overlapping in sound and subject matter. Though Outfangthief may have been written after Infangthief, it is no mere follow-up, with it‘s own creation causing a re-visiting and re-working of the earlier album, which in turn informed the writing of its twin.
Taking their titles from Old English legal terms („thief seized without“ and „thief seized within”), the central thread running through both albums is the illusion of assumed human authority – that which is given and that which is taken by force. With Western society seemingly hellbent on willingly embracing a brutally destructive economic model (even in its death throes), these albums attempt – in their own small way – to undertake the essential task of imagining alternative ways of being.
Questions and Answers
3 FACTS
1: Transphobes die alone.
2: There is a ghost in the wall of Marisco Castle.
3: Wuppertal is underrated.
11 QUESTIONS
1. What is the biggest inspiration for your music?
It sounds stupid, maybe, but everything. Making music is a way for me to try and convert the messy, chaotic, often nonsensical inside of my brain into messy, chaotic, often nonsensical sound. The moment I try to think about it too precisely is the moment I start hating what I do. So it all goes in, one way or another, and what comes out is often a surprise even to me.
2. How and when did you get into making music?
I started playing the cello when I was 3 years old and worked my way through the grades for the next ten years until I picked up a bass guitar and it’s all been downhill since then.
3. What are 5 of your favourite albums of all time? (yes we know it is difficult).
– Geinoh Yamashirogumi – Ecophony Rinne
– Alice Coltrane – Lord of Lords
– Magma – Ëmëhntëhtt-Ré
– Sleater-Kinney – The Hot Rock
– Meat Loaf – Bat Out of Hell II
4. What do you associate with Berlin?
Playing some really fun shows there, visiting friends. It’s a beautiful city to walk around. I hope to come back before too long.
5. What’s your favourite place in your town?
Anchor Head, looking out across the bay to Wales, Devon and south Somerset. The sky and the sea and the mud and the hills. You can get a different view every day of the year.
6. If there was no music in the world, what would you do instead?
The last couple of years I’ve been writing fiction as much as I’ve been writing music, so I guess it would just tip the balance even further in that direction. But there’s always music, you just have to listen.
