Post-rock
Knoydart Records · 29 May 2026
All three tracks carry the exact time of their improvisation in the title: “Phase 1: Induction” is dated 17 December 2024, 17:57; “Phase 2: Stabilisation”, 16 December, 16:25; and “Phase 3: Exploration”, 16 December, 15:37. The running order therefore reverses the studio order, and the nineteen minutes and eleven seconds that close the record are the first thing that was taped.
Peninsula are four, and they come from Mallaig, in the north-west of Scotland: George Robertson on drums and percussion, David Boothby on guitar and soundscapes, James Blackford on the other guitar, and Tom Blackford on bass, synthesisers and xenochrony, Frank Zappa’s studio technique of moving a part recorded for one piece into another.
The synthesisers never take the lead and come in mostly when the bass is out, which leaves the whole job of carrying forty-nine minutes to the drums.
“Phase 2: Stabilisation” (14:21) is the shortest of the three and the cleanest. The drums work up front with figures that keep changing and the guitar is dry and clipped; it is the point where you can most hear that this came out of an improvisation rather than a score.
The record gives little else away. The band has no website, only Facebook and Bandcamp; the Bandcamp credits production and mixing to Tom Blackford and mastering to James Plotkin, but not one composition credit; and nobody has explained why the three phases run in this order instead of the recorded one. Three pieces of fifteen, fourteen and nineteen minutes, with no voice and titles that state nothing but a time, ask a great deal of a first listen.
It was recorded at Karma Studios in Stoke Newington in December 2024 and released by Knoydart Records on 29 May. The group, formed in 2018, has three soundtrack albums behind it, one long-form composition and four sets of improvisations: “Revelation Space” mixes the last two categories. In July Boothby put out a solo EP, “We Pretend We Are Birds”, with Robertson and Tom Blackford.
Rating: 7.5/10
Text by Marçal Bonastre