Martin Carr has never been an artist who sits still. From shaping the widescreen indie of The Boo Radleys to the glitch‑friendly experiments of Bravecaptain, he’s always been a restless creator. Now, the Cardiff‑based songwriter, guitarist, filmmaker, and all‑around sonic architect is stepping into a new era with What Future — a solo album that refuses to behave like anything else in his catalogue.
Out 1 May on his own Sonny Boy Records, What Future finds Carr diving deep into a world of distracted beats, warped electronics, and shifting emotional weather. It’s experimental, yes — but also deeply personal, full of the same self‑interrogation that’s run through his work for decades, only now expressed through texture rather than confession.
The title track, accompanied by a self‑directed animated video, is already out in the world, offering a first glimpse of the album’s strange, magnetic pull. MOJO has already weighed in with a 4/5 review, while Pitchfork once again praises Carr as “one of the most adventurous sonic architects of his generation.”
Carr describes the album as the result of years of collecting sounds — snippets of McCartney basslines, fragments of SF Sorrow, overheard voices, even the local scrap‑van’s Mark E. Smith‑like announcements — and then sculpting them into something new.
“I make a huge mess then I start chipping away at it until it starts to sound like something,” he says.
He cites influences like RZA, Prefuse 73, Pole, King Tubby, Vernon Elliot, and Eden Ahbez — all world‑builders in their own right. But What Future ultimately sounds like no one but Carr.
The album follows The Canton Hours and 2017’s New Shapes of Life, the latter hailed by Pitchfork as “a suave, sophisticated, rhythmically robust pop record” and by CLASH as “very possibly the best thing he has ever released.” If those records marked a reinvention, What Future feels like the next leap.