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."
Powell has existed of late in an intensive mode of creation that utilises stochastic processes (probabilistic events) and a particular sonic palette. But where previous releases – such as the many prongs of his a ƒolder project, or the hyper-synthetic Piano Music 1—7 on Editions Mego – interrogated and developed formal processes for synthesised sound, on We Do Recover the processes are subsumed as tools for expression. What unfolds is an extended suite of minimal music that articulates and traces an intensive period of upheaval, pain, and hope; tight envelopes of sonic architecture are led astray; energies explode beyond bounds previously set. We can feel the collapse of control, and an overflowing sense of something starting anew. It is, in turn, surprising, baffling and beautiful.
The story begins with the radiance and glittering synthetic tones of 'All These Feelings'—like looking up into the vastness of the night sky. By track seven the wonder has become unsteady, with wayward keys, stochastic shapes, brittle fizz and hurried words emerging, unprompted, from the stillness. There is percussive brutalism in 'Relapse', and 'Afterlife' brings weight and solemnity in its funereal refrain. Four-to-the-'floor 'Newborn' turns the lights on as an equilibrium of sorts is sought and wrestled with, before 'So Rivers Plunge' sings like nobody's listening — a MIDI orchestra warming up in the box while the laptop remains asleep. Closing track 'The Bitter End' is no ending at all, instead promising a future in shimmering torques, caught on the wind of hope. It returns to us, with renewed awe, the starlight we began with.
WDR is the first full-length solo album Powell has ever released on his own label Diagonal – all other releases have been EPs, 12"s, or collaborations — and so it represents a landmark in his catalogue in more ways than one. "I nearly added a question mark to the album title," he says. "Recovery is a long process, and the album reflects that. There's a lot of short termism in the world right now, but recovery, in whatever guise, is the opposite of that… It takes time."
