Will Samson releases new album 'Active Imagination'

Marking ten years since the release of 'Balance', his 2012 debut, Will Samson’s new album feels almost like the product of his learning and growth over the past decade. For the first time, he allowed himself a dedicated studio space outside of his home, a blessing for both his mental health and workflow, while he also upgraded his tools, finally purchasing a good vocal microphone of his own, and a new laptop that didn’t constantly overheat and crash, allowing him to upgrade his recording software for the first time in years. While these somewhat mundane details may seem superfluous, for someone who’s spent so much time in flux, they brought about a stability that Samson’s work has so often been unable to find.

Recently settled in his new home in Portugal, Samson has spent much of his life moving from place to place. Born in Oxford, he soon emigrated with his parents to Western Australia, where he lived for ten years before returning to the UK. He then moved between Oxford and Berlin, then Brighton, Lisbon, Brussels and finally Bristol, where 'Active Imagination' was recorded in the building of a former malthouse.

This fluidity has always been central to his work, so much of his music has examined ideas of identity and home. 'Active Imagination' is, in numerous ways, a continuation of that search and discovery, but the security that lies at its core has resulted in newfound confidence in Will’s own craft and ability, leading to his most absorbing full-length collection to date.

“My family tree spreads so far across the globe that I've often wondered if it is in my blood to be constantly moving, perhaps in a search to find a solid sense of belonging" says Samson. "With no real ancestral homeland (or rather, a multitude of them) it is easy to feel a conflicted sense of identity – even if just on a very subtle level. These feelings would sometimes appear as dreams, which then became songs."

Musically it bends subtly between folk and electronica, where little pulses of experimental flourishes sit next to Samson’s evocative vocals, and the record pulls many of its reference points from a number of the artists he’s shared a stage with over the years: from Bon Iver’s S. Carey, through to The Album Leaf, Olafur Arnalds, and Do Make Say Think.

Where previous efforts were informed hugely by his work with tape machines, here he uses more live percussion than ever before. His long-time collaborator Beatrijs De Klerck provides strings, Rachael Dadd adds subtle backing vocals, but its Will’s unique vision that gently comes alive throughout the album. Influenced by Sgt Pepper's and Luke Abbott’s Translate LP, Samson pushed himself to new heights, completely reworking and re-recording some initial tracks when he realised he wasn't creatively extending himself far enough.

The finished result is a mesmerising testimonial to learning self-love and growing inner-confidence, as well as the aforementioned examination of identity. Indeed, some of the songs were also pulled from Samson’s attempts to learn lucid dreaming during the initial lockdowns of 2020. Many of the album’s lyrics are simple descriptions of these dreams, which Will documented with a dedicated dream diary: ’Juvenita’, for example, was directly lifted from a dream Samson had about walking through an empty Indian city with his ancestors.

Elsewhere, the album’s opening track ‘Arpy’ – a stirring five-and-a-half minutes with an engrossing percussive build – always felt special to Will but took many months to be created, while the album’s fleeting and skeletal closing track ‘Shun’ appeared almost entirely in a single day.

Dreamlike in the swirling, illusory nature of its unfolding, 'Active Imagination' is a testament to Samson’s continued exploration – both of the world around him and his own inner workings that continue to provide great mysteries to interpret. Patient but cryptic, the album takes that voyage and creates a mesmerising landscape for listeners to explore, in the same way that Samson’s work always has.