Enofa - Small Modernist House in Woodland Setting (2026)

Conceived over several years of struggle, growth and invention, Small Modernist House in Woodland Setting feels monumental, a totemic magnum opus of Enofa's enduring musical vision. While monumental in scale and ambition (you can lose yourself in the expansive 80 minute running time), the journey registers intensely personal vistas as we are swept along by Enofa's beguiling stream of consciousness.

Dark at times, often witty, always moving and instinctively engaging, Enofa conjures a form of ancient modernity that somehow taps into the very essence of what life (and death) is all about.

"Some albums are easy to make. Others aren't. Small Modernist House in Woodland Setting wasn't. I began recording the album in late 2021, following the completion of my previous Subexotic record, The House by the Sea. In that time, it has been through more than 30 iterations, featuring close to a hundred different pieces of music. Some of these ended up on other releases, many will languish on my hard drive for a long time before inevitably being rediscovered in a decade, leaving me to wonder why I never released them at the time.

The album had many shapes over the years: a pair of warm, pastoral, 15 minute drone tracks; a collection of stark minimalist pieces portraying brutalist buildings; a dark, creepy acoustic doom record; a whimsical sound collage. You'll hear all of those elements within the final work, but the one thing that tied together every iteration of the album was the use of acoustic sounds. My music has always attempted to mesh together the acoustic and analogue with more overtly digital sounds, and this is maybe the most successful combination of approaches in more than a decade.

There was much discussion between myself and the label over the final title: Choking on Congested Earth, or Small Modernist House in Woodland Setting. Dan at Subexotic, quite rightly, argued in favour of the latter, itself partly inspired by the cover of Orbital's The Box single, the first CD I bought with my own money as a child, and a record I felt this album shares a kinship with in its atmosphere, if not its actual musical style. Nevertheless, the alternative title also hints at the mood of many of these pieces: the claustrophobic feeling of the darker side of nature, its unstoppable force, a feeling of helplessness against its power.

Usually, the longer I spend working on an album, the less I like the final result. This time, I'm pleased to say I feel I've created one of my best works to date. Worth the four years of stress? I hope so."