Published
We Do Recover
We Do Recover, the new album from Powell and his first album proper on his own Diagonal Records, is a vitalising record of recovery and a statement of reassurance. The music is intensely emotional and lean, and forms a uniquely expressive story that opens up new ground in the artists’s bizarre continuum of synthesised sound — this time triggered by experiences of grief and addiction.
The suicide of one of his life-long friends in 2024 was a life-changing loss which eternally altered Powell’s life, and consequently his music. A period of recovery followed, one accompanied by the assembling of this album from hours of music made between 2018 and 2025. “After my friend’s death I felt I went into a tailspin, but really, I was already in one,” he says. “I found myself unable to handle anything – my way of coping was always to run away and escape. I realised it was going to kill me, so I made some changes. It made me see the music I had been making through a different lens, one that mirrored my experience of recovery. It’s not linear, it’s often difficult, but there is beauty there if you look hard enough. I wanted it to be a message of hope, if only for myself.”
“‘We Do Recover’ is released today to you, our loyal Bandcamp customers who help us stay afloat. The record was 7 years in the making (at least some of the tracks go as far back as that) and it was compiled in the wake of the death of a great friend who took his own life last year. That experience of grief, coupled with my own recovery from various mental health issues, made me see my music through a different lens and, I think, see some of the beauty in the things I had been making but had not previously felt.
The record, for me anyway, is a message of HOPE to all those who have had to come back from the brink of something. I hope you enjoy it and — more than that — find some strength in the music.
Yours, with love . . .
Oscar (Powell)”
Powell returns to NTS tonight to present new music fro We Do Recover, his first album proper on his own Diagonal Records and a vitalising record of recovery and a statement of reassurance. The music opens up new new ground in the artists’s bizarre continuum of synthesised sound — this time triggered by experiences of grief and addiction. Tonight he will premier parts of the record and talk about some of the ideas and life events that led to its construction.