Wildernesses, a London-based ‘dreamo’ band, arrive at “English Darkness” with a weight of history behind them. The lineup features musicians who have long circled the UK underground, from Phill’s time in Late Night Fiction, sharing stages with Twin Atlantic, The Xcerts and Dinosaur Pile-Up, to Mark’s work in We Never Learned To Live, who played ArcTanGent and Portals. Sam, the newest member, reconnects with Mark after their early 2000s band If Heroes Should Fail, while other members spent years in scrappy post-hardcore projects that never broke beyond early EPs.
Those threads converge in Wildernesses, pulling from post-hardcore, post-rock and dream-pop to shape a sound that blends ambient layers with stark lyrical focus.
Photos by Stuart Baxter
Musical influences form only half of the story.
The band cite Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky as sonic touchstones, alongside Justin Vernon, James Blake, La Dispute, The National and Sufjan Stevens for their emotional storytelling.
Yet life experience presses harder on “English Darkness.” Phill works as an Approved Mental Health Professional, conducting assessments that determine whether someone must be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. He describes the stark realities of the system: people held for days in emergency rooms or police-guarded suites when hospital beds are unavailable. The strain on patients is obvious, but the impact on professionals lingers too. “Got stoned again. No feeling. Palpitating heartbeat,” Phill sings, framing how coping mechanisms edge into self-medication.
That thread of realism runs deeper. Phill once worked as a restaurant manager while playing in Late Night Fiction, until his mother’s Motor Neurone Disease diagnosis shifted priorities. Caring responsibilities reshaped his career, turning toward mental health work and eventually seeding the themes that underpin much of Wildernesses’ output — fragility, loss, and the stark limits of control.
Songwriting in the band moved from loose jams to more deliberate structuring once Phill joined. “English Darkness” itself began as a drifting post-rock sketch, until reworking at Phill’s home studio unlocked the tension and final chorus. The breakthrough came when guitar parts locked into his falsetto line, distortion pushed forward, and the track surged into conclusion. The band call it a moment that showed the value of both live experimentation and solitary refinement.
Recording followed a two-stage process. Early demos captured on phones were layered and refined by Phill at home before being tracked properly with Joe Clayton of Pijn at No Studio in Manchester. Sessions with Clayton balanced patience and precision, without the feel of deadline pressure.
Line-up changes also shaped their trajectory. Guitarist Jonathan left in April, forcing the band to regroup quickly. Sam stepped in and immediately felt like a natural fit, contributing parts to new material recorded later with Clayton. Around the same time, after struggling with multiple rejections, the group signed with Floodlit Recordings — a move they describe as both a relief and a natural progression.
Visuals became just as central. For the “English Darkness” video, directed by Stuart Baxter with Adam Blyth as director of photography, the band filmed at Sunk Island near Hull, a bleak rural landscape with farms, barns, and wide open water.
The imagery — trees bending in the wind, dust drifting in a barn of model trains, and a closing shot by the sea — tied back to Phill’s hometown.
The shoot coincided with a headline show at Polar Bear Music Club, where Phill reconnected with old bandmates from Late Night Fiction. “It was honestly such an immense experience,” they recall, with the video acting as an homage to Hull and a document of return.
“English Darkness” threads together all of this: the unfinished stories of past bands, personal histories marked by illness and responsibility, the pressures of mental health work, and a willingness to pull those realities into art without dressing them up. Wildernesses push forward by holding close to that balance.
