25 September 2026 – Jules Reidy Lets the Light In on Clerestory

Berlin-based Australian guitarist and composer Jules Reidy releases Clerestory through Thrill Jockey, a record whose architectural title provides a useful guide to the music inside. A clerestory is the elevated section of a building pierced by windows to admit light, and Reidy uses that image to explore brightness, shadow, reflection and symmetry across a project markedly different from the dense constructions of their earlier Ghost/Spirit.

One side centres on "Shadow Symmetric," a string quartet commissioned by JACK Quartet through its studio programme, while the broader album continues Reidy's habit of treating acoustic and electronic sound as materials that can be folded, stretched and reflected rather than placed into conventional song forms. The result belongs somewhere between contemporary composition, experimental guitar music and ambient sound, although attempting to choose a single shelf rather defeats the point.

Reidy's work is often described in structural language because it genuinely behaves that way: motifs become rooms, tones create surfaces and repetition changes the perceived dimensions of what you are hearing. Clerestory is not background music pretending nothing is happening. It is quiet music in which a great deal is happening very slowly. Put differently, this is probably the only notable release today that could reasonably inspire listeners to Google church architecture midway through side one.