[Cover photo credit to Maisy Banks]

South London six-piece band Gently Tender have announced their new EP, This Was Once Fields, out May 22nd, 2026 via TODO Records. The band have also shared lead single, “A Mound A Field”, complete with visuals directed by Maisy Banks where frontman Sam Fryer traverses through city and countryside “in a surreal, dreamlike state.”

Fryer shares:

A Mound A Field is the essentially inspired by the beginning of a walk that I did two years ago. It started in Ridge, a small village in Hertfordshire, and went all the way down through the hills of North London, into central and finished at Temple on the north bank of the Thames.

The song is capturing the moment when you’re walking the open fields and then are suddenly hit with the view of the vast open city, being aware of the changes in emotion, how it changes the way you breathe, and how it compels you to meditate on all life on Earth how it has developed for all good and worse.

This Was Once Fields is Gently Tender’s first new music since 2023, “sonically inspired by the landscapes of the rolling hills and rugged moors of the British countryside.”

Of the origins of the new EP, Fryer shares :

“The songs that make up this project represent different chapters, memories, thoughts and reflections on the life I have lived in the city. How I’ve always managed to live here but never felt like I actually belong in such a loud and fast paced nerve-jangling environment.

To give myself breaks from writing in the darkness of my windowless studio in Haringey, I have been walking the green belt of London for 14 years, and I never imagined it would provide me with so much inspiration. It has provided me with a universe of material that I can dive back into when I need to escape, and that’s where this music was born.”

Gently Tender will play a hometown headline show at London’s ICA on Wednesday, May 27th, tickets are on sale now. The band have also been announced to appear at Brighton’s The Great Escape Festival in May and Ireland’s All Together Now Festival in August.

Gently Tender – Live Dates:

5/15 – The Great Escape Festival, Brighton, UK
5/27 – Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK
8/1 – All Together Now Festival, County Waterford, IE