Roy Montgomery & Martha Skye Murphy's 'Nebular' Is Too Beautiful to Pull Apart
The Sonic Breakdown
Nebular, out via AD 93, pairs New Zealand guitar experimentalist Roy Montgomery with London vocalist and composer Martha Skye Murphy across five tracks built around a celestial theme — fast-moving clouds, satellites blinking in the distance, matter floating somewhere in between. The two artists worked remotely, which makes the record’s cohesion genuinely remarkable: this doesn’t sound like files traded over email, it sounds like one continuous exhale.
The Production & Mix
The Spatial Dynamics: Montgomery’s guitar work forms “one endless, shimmering rhythm” underneath Murphy’s endlessly layered voice, and the mix is deliberately ambiguous — individual elements blend so completely that pulling them apart feels almost beside the point. That blur is the album’s whole design philosophy.
The Dynamics: The record isn’t static, though. “The Play of Light and Dark” sprawls out to seventeen minutes of patient construction, while “Cloudburst” moves with real immediacy, its spiny guitars and rising keyboard tide giving the album a pulse when it needs one.
Standout Performance
Murphy’s voice is the record’s center of gravity, swinging between otherworldly pitches — “like an alien communication” — and close, intimate whispers, sometimes within the same track. Closer “At Dusk,” featuring Mary Lattimore’s harp, gives that voice its most spacious, generous setting yet.
Track Highlights
🌈 “Cloudburst” — spiny guitars and a rising tide of keyboard give the record its most immediate, grounded moment.
⚡ “The Play of Light and Dark” — seventeen minutes that never once feel like an indulgence; the album’s beating heart.
🌈 “At Dusk” (feat. Mary Lattimore) — a closer that opens the whole record back up rather than winding it down.
Nebular is a record to get lost in on purpose. The subtleties are the point — don’t rush them.