Abrasive Trees have always occupied the shadowy edges of the UK’s experimental underground, a band drawn to tension, texture and the emotional weight that sits between silence and eruption. But with their debut full‑length album Light Remaining, released 29 May via Argonauta Records, the trio step into a new phase: bolder, heavier, more expansive, and unmistakably their own.
Where earlier releases hinted at post‑punk lineage, Light Remaining feels like a widescreen evolution. The record moves with a slow, deliberate gravity, spectral guitars dissolving into low‑end pressure, fragile passages collapsing into towering crescendos. It’s an album that breathes, one that treats space as an instrument and pacing as a narrative tool. Across its runtime, the band navigate trauma, catharsis, societal fracture and the strange, shimmering highs that come with survival. It ends with an almost 11‑minute immersion in beauty and noise, a closing statement that lingers long after the final note.
Abrasive Trees’ core — Matthew Rochford, Jay Newton and Will Tyler — bring with them a shared history of projects that prize atmosphere and emotional depth. Between them, their past work spans Silver Moth, Quiet Quiet Band, Rothko, and Jo Beth Young’s RISE/Talitha Rise, and that lineage is felt throughout Light Remaining: the patience, the sense of scale, the instinct for when to hold back and when to let everything collapse.
The album also features contributions from former member Ben Roberts on cello and Yunala Songweaver of Gravity Machine, whose vocals add a spectral lift to the record’s more introspective corners. Production comes from Gravity Machine’s Niall Parker, with mastering by Rothko’s Mark L Beazley, a pairing that leans into the band’s love of depth, grain and dynamic extremes.
Live, the material has already begun to shift and expand, with new bassist Georgia Swallow joining the lineup and visual artist Jess Wooller creating the videos that accompany the album’s rollout.
For Rochford, the release of Light Remaining marks the end of a long, sometimes difficult creative journey. “Seeing this album being released feels like a relief, but it carries a quiet sense of creative satisfaction,” he reflects. “Everything has somehow aligned to make this imperfectly perfect collection ready… it genuinely feels like we’ve arrived somewhere meaningful with this work.”
That sense of arrival is key. Light Remaining doesn’t feel like a debut so much as a culmination, the sound of a band who have spent years refining their language of restraint and eruption, now finally given the space to speak in full.
Signing with Italian doom specialists Argonauta Records places Abrasive Trees within a wider international network of heavy, exploratory music. It’s a fitting home: the band’s sound may not sit neatly within genre boundaries, but their commitment to atmosphere, weight and emotional honesty resonates strongly with Argonauta’s catalogue.
Tracklisting
No Solace
Star Sapphire
Tao To Earth
Flickering Flame
Carved Skull
I Didn’t Mean To Hurt You
Megadrone (CD & Bandcamp bonus)
Recorded across secluded studios in Devon, Light Remaining arrives on 29 May via Argonauta Records, available on all streaming platforms, CD and vinyl (via PIAS), including a limited green vinyl edition and an artist-exclusive version on Bandcamp.
