I’m pleased to share with you an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at a future release. This unfinished version of the song will only be online for [two] days, so go here now to listen because you won’t hear the pre-master again.

If you like it, let me know by reply email or comment.

Who or what is Sunwraith?

This is a new project from Brendon Kahi and me. We’ve been in two prior bands and, while working on Domes “Vol. II,” got excited about a group on songs that felt natural together and like something else entire. Not Decortica 4, not Domes 3: to Brendon in particular, these were coherent compositions. We pursued that intuition and defined a concept album by an untitled band whose only imperative was to mine this new vein of post-metal (see Magnalith, “Memento Mori”) and prog rock (see Decortica, “Love Hotel”) at which we found ourselves.

(I’m pleased to say that all tracking has been completed for Domes, “Vol. II” and with Sunwraith’s mastering concluding, I can also get back to Whiteheron. More on these later.)

We started to imagine a body of work in response to (among other inspirations) Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Stalker,” “Solaris,” and “Mirror.” The auteur’s thesis of imprinted time was interesting and lyrically provided a means by which to explore existentialism, conflict, human connection, and narrative symbolism.

History is not Time; nor is evolution. They are both consequences. Time is a state: the flame in which there lives the salamander of the human soul.
—Tarkovsky

Once we completed the music to three or four songs, we want to engage a drummer early to ensure strong alignment to our goals and make informed percussion decisions. I enjoyed working with great players in this way on “Memento Mori”. We were also conscious of what we learnt from Domes, “Vol. I” — our 18,000km working-holiday on a 500 tonne lightship moored on the River Thames.

That project came about as a very necessary personal journey back to creativity, and the three of us (with my brother, Dan), were mentally, emotionally, and professionally ready to do something just crazy enough to work. We were extremely fortunate that our families valued this and facilitated the time away. The insight was: our creative, familial, and professional selves are three legs of a stool. They all matter interdependently. Being fulfilled by art (or an otherwise personal joy) builds and gives energy for the other areas of life—in fact, I find it makes you a more present partner and energetic worker.

Enter Logan Compain. Brendon and Logan were the rhythm section of Auckland scene post-metal, post-rock acts Pegasus and Ender. They had recorded everything from “country noir” to drop-A sludge. Logan had long since stored the “metal drums” away and focused on other pursuits. Brendon felt the opportunity to hit hard and nerd out on sci-fi cinema would be interesting for him. While initially engaged as a session player, Logan’s connection to the concept, calibre of musical intellect, and quality of character were such that we haven’t even had a discussion about transitioning to full-time membership — it just became emphatically assured.

So too the assumption that this band would perform live which I haven’t done in a long time. Yet here we are acquiring amps, cabinets, and fuzz pedals aligned to our analogue aesthetic and somewhat in contrast to the live digital signal processing of 2026 guitar bands. (To be clear, I like digital and we’ll use samples of our recorded synths; all the tools have a purpose. Sunwraith v1.0 is just leaning into a haunted organic and retro-future matrix.)

This is the band. What’s in a name? For more than 6 months, we iterated around Simon Stålenhag and Strugatsky Brothers-inspired monikers. Ultimately, it was determined by the songs. Never had my bands’ identities been defined by the music so instructively! The sunwraith is the record and the record is Sunwraith’s: the name given to the blanket that gives shape to the mystery, to borrow a phase.

I don’t know exactly what it means, but I trust in the general direction. Chris Cornell said of “Black Hole Sun” that he understood it even less over time. That seems to align with Tarkovsky’s existential view:

Some say art helps man to know the world like any other intellectual activity. I don’t believe in this possibility of knowing. I am almost an agnostic. Knowledge distracts us from our main purpose in life. The more we know, the less we know; getting deeper, our horizon becomes narrower. Art enriches man’s own spiritual capabilities, and he can then rise above himself to use what we call ‘Free Will’.

I can nevertheless imagine some broad interpretations. Ghostly rays reaching out to a sentient ocean planet. Phantom signals on industrial relays. A temporal bridge between the quantitative (chronos) and the qualitative (kairos) that gives interpretive meaning to the present moment. A conceptual monolith that containing constructivist energy and ideas.

If that sounds in any way an interesting premise on which to make music, then I’m pleased to share this song with you and the rest of the album plus deep-dive stories over the next six months. Thanks for being here and please tell some friends.

M.

Follow @sunwraithband on Instagram, YouTube.

This post was originally published in the Rothko Records newsletter.