KiF - Still Out [Sound Records]

Format: 180g transparent LP + obi + insert.

• Disco Pogo – Albums of the Year – 4th place
• Piccadilly Records – End of Year Review – Top 100 Albums – 42nd place
• Stranger Than Paradise – Monsters of 25 – Albums of the Year – 8th place
• Bleep – Albums of the Year 2025
• Phonica Records – Best Albums of 2025
• White Rabbit – Records of 2025
• “The true follow up, 35 years late, to The KLF's Chill Out”. JD Twitch (Optimo).
• “The album is the perfect companion piece to The KLF’s classic, using the British countryside as a backdrop whilst occasionally reminding you that Mother Nature is not to be trifled with”. Strictly Kev (DJ Food)
• “This record and film are just lovely. You need this in your life. Moo-Moo!”. Balearic Mike (Down To The Sea & Back)
• “Unselfconsciously tapping into something beyond our understanding, casting a spell not of the ever-fashionable folk horror, but of folk beauty”. Dr. Rob (BanBanTonTon)
• “Not only one of 2025's best and best-loved records, but an enduring cultural artifact to boot”. Joe Muggs (Disco Pogo)
• “A beautiful ambient journey through landscape, leading the listener from reality into the dream-state and back. A mystical realm full of mysterious chants, rattling trains and sounds emerging from deep within the earth”. Lally MacBeth & Matthew Shaw (Stone Club)

Recorded in a remote cabin on the Devon coastline, STILL OUT is a long-playing collaboration between musicians and producers, and childhood friends, Will Cookson and Tom Haverly. A reflection on friendship, landscape and the passing of time, the project inspired a road trip from North Yorkshire to North Devon which they undertook together in the summer of 2024, and serves as the soundtrack to a film of the same name directed by filmmaker Rufus Exton, which premiered at the Stroud Film Festival in March 2025.

Like the film, STILL OUT is also an indirect homage to The KLF's iconic 1990 album Chill Out, which the Gloucestershire-based duo rediscovered after it unexpectedly appeared, some years ago, in Tom's father's record collection. Motivated to create their own recording using an equally free-form process, Will and Tom relocated to the Devon coast in late summer 2023, where they assembled a 40-minute mix from their personal archive of field recordings and found sounds, working in an isolated cabin with no electricity or mobile phone signal.

“It all came together using cut-and-paste techniques, with constant shifts and adjustments,” explains Will. “The end result was a sound collage that felt like something The Bomb Squad might have made, if ambient music had been the only material available in their sample library.”

Using "ambient" as a starting point rather than an end in itself, they drew inspiration from across the musical spectrum: from classic Brian Eno, Philip Glass and Bill Evans, to more atypical figures such as 80s singer-songwriter Virginia Astley and the late DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall. However, the connections are far from obvious, as the audio moves fluidly between field recordings, spoken word interludes, atmospheric passages, and snippets of vintage pop.

Edited and assembled using freely available open-source software, the original material was often radically altered using tools like PaulStretch, a digital sound transformation algorithm that allows audio files to be stretched to extreme lengths.

“When we found ourselves in a creative block or didn't know how to approach a tricky part, we'd say, ‘let's put some syrup on it and slow it down’,” says Tom. “That always helped us get back on track during late-night recording sessions in the cabin.”

Part soundtrack and part meditative experiment, STILL OUT is conceived as a reflection on the mental and emotional shift that occurs when we step away from the daily routine: an album that celebrates our ever-changing relationship with the world around us and the mystery of what it means to journey through time and space.