[Cover photo credit to Viktorsha Uliyanova]
Catskills-based composer, songwriter, and sound artist Matthew O’Neill has announced his new album, Through to Us, set for release October 16, 2026, via his nonprofit label, Panther Mountain. Through to Us is a collection of experimental compositions “shaped through direct collaboration with land, water, and the unseen”, which includes field recordings, synthesizers, acoustic instrumentation, and alternative recording techniques.
The album is built from “electro-acoustic composition, ambient music, microtonality, and soundscape”. With this album, even the “recording process itself becomes part of the musical language.”
O’Neill heads out on tour this Fall with dates in New York, Arizona, and California. Information on dates here.
With the announcement, O’Neill has also shared the title track and video “Through to Us.” The piece began as a soundscape composition recorded where O’Neill lives in the Catskill Mountains. He was recording in a wooden studio with the doors and windows open, where he “responded intuitively on synthesizer and piano.” Some sound elements include metal bars played on cedar logs and antler scraped across wet stone.
O’Neill explains:
The title ‘Through to Us’ refers to the sense that something beyond what is immediately visible or understood can reach us through sound, place, synchronicity, and presence. The piece marks an arrival in my compositional practice: an experimental approach shaped through deep listening and direct collaboration with land, water, and the unseen.
The album is the result of what O’Neill calls “a lifelong practice of engagement with Indigenous musical ontologies.”
He explains:
It’s central to maintaining balance as a culture and a person. The biggest part of my practice over the years has been creating music in reciprocity with the land and all the life around me. There’s no separation between the listening and the making. It’s a circle of relationship-building and creating through listening.
Tour dates:
Oct 14 Ridgewood, NY @ Dada
Oct 17 Prescott, AZ @ Fairweather Club
Oct 18 Topanga, CA @ Endless Color
