Channel Suite

This new year sees the official release of the next Papernut album, Channel Suite.

If 2018's Outstairs Instairs was an album dealing largely with grief and loss, then Channel Suite is perhaps an obvious next step: moving on, new starts, and hope. The album is bookended with optimism and sunshine - the Byrds-y, literal and metaphorical "End of The Downs", and the almost McCartney meets Whistling Jack Smith jaunt of "Jump in Your Heart".

"..you find by and by there's a sea for your sky and a hand for your hand…"

In between there are songs about casual stargazing, architecture, inventing word games, ex-gangland restauranteurs, and references to Button's 2022-3 mindset, including his continued championing of DIY music making ethics (one song consists of instructions on how to master an album yourself), all set against snapshots of a new life by the sea.

Linking to another older Papernut release - their acclaimed 2014 album There's No Underground was a kind of love letter to suburban S. E. London, Button's home from childhood. Channel Suite feels like the first flush of something similar - a kind of relaxing, and the thrill of the small things, the mundane.

Button is joined on the album by Papernut stalwarts Robert Halcrow, Robert Rotifer, Darren Hayman and Jack Hayter. Guitars, keyboards and layered vocals are underpinned throughout by simple 808 drum machine patterns - a mix of organic and mechanical that unifies the tracks.