release date: 05.06.2026 via Not Applicable
Featuring Alex Bonney, Tim Giles and Isambard Khroustaliov, Eternal Gong Bath… is Leverton Fox’s ninth release and is due for LP / DL release via the Not Applicable label…
“Like the overlap of Faust’s “Krautrock” and Miles Davis’s Pangaea… a very singular hybrid” – The Wire
“Improvisational magic, conjuring up myriad images of a hidden world.” – Freq
”An extremely tactile avant-electronica that makes full use of mind-bending stereo production … ranging from squat, stunted machine-funk beats to bubbling, aquatic ambient environments.” – Jazzwise
“Stunningly beautiful, full of subtle changes as it develops, the creativity and variety we associate with the best contemporary jazz.” – UK Jazz News
”Leverton Fox come across a lot more gritty and demented than Polar Bear and there are even shades of 23 Skidoo and, more substantially, Nurse With Wound and very early Cabaret Voltaire.” – Freq
When The Residents recorded their album Not Available, they allegedly decreed that it should not be released until the group had forgotten that they had made it. In the case of Eternal Gong Bath of the Sunbed Mind, the latest release by the trio Leverton Fox, this is an album based on a recording session that had completely slipped their minds until they rediscovered it, and recognised its merits from an “outside” perspective.
Consisting of Alex Bonney (trumpet, electronics), Tim Giles (electronics, drums) and Isambard Khroustaliov (electronics), Leverton Fox are singular in that they stress the value of playing electronics collectively, the importance of that dynamic, on which they lay greater stress than production. They follow Derek Bailey’s dictum that improvised playing should be “non idiomatic”, with the players departing as much as possible from the preconceived roles of their practice, resulting in a freer outcome. You suspect that the very process of assembling these pieces, of forgetting customary role playing, involves a departure from consciousness, a loss of “self” – listening back to the session, Leverton Fox’s players remark that at certain points they couldn’t remember who was playing what.
“Play” is a watchword with Leverton Fox, for all of their ferocity, their sense of purpose, the intensity of their playing. One thinks of the radical lightness of being of Can’s Holger Czukay, or Ligeti in his musique concrète phase. Its reflected in the album’s titles such as opener ‘Seals For Spronky’, a unique sonic permutation – amid the sound of liquid, twisting glass, a furious centipede’s dance, punctuated with the odd groan – yet for all the ostensible frenzy, there is between the players an interlocking at a profound level. On ‘Serenade to a Blobfish (Subaqueous Sound System)’ the shuffling, the scratching continues, with scuttling, tumultuous percussive runs – Giles’ non-use of cymbals allows other tones to flourish in this dance of light and shards, shifting kaleidoscopically, before juddering synth patterns, going head to head with relentless, percussive cascades. ‘Sounding Balloons at the Kármán Line’ has about it a faintly martial air, the sense of a distant, charred battlefield, as the electronics spark and the glassworks glow. It’s Stockhausen-esque in the field of its hyperactivity but with added tonality. There’s a sense of the players going about their individual business but in the same room, working towards a collective outcome, with every moment a serendipitous collision. There are faint echoes here of Herbie Hancock’s Sextant – the sense of a shattered beauty – as well as Raymond Scott, Hector Zazou.
‘Sleeper Train’ is as close as Leverton Fox get to figurative, a palpable feeling of hurtling across the clattering, rail track divides, a picaresque series of events to windows left and right. ‘Socrates The Quail’, meanwhile, crams a wealth of avian detail and agitation into its 37 second duration. Finally, ‘Speculative Aerodynamic Problems of a Human Headed Winged Lion’, on which droning broadsides hover atop the scuffle and fragmentation of its surfaces – Bonney’s trumpet rings out like a huntsman’s peal, as the percussion keeps up a furious gallop, wonderfully impeded by a cumulative mass of field events. Eternal Gong Bath of the Sunbed Mind clocks in at 24 minutes but there are triple albums with less going on in them than in this album, within which whole galaxies are hinted at. In support of the album release, Leverton Fox will be performing at the following dates:
11th June 2026 – New River Studios, London
12th June 2026 – OCCI, Amsterdam
14th June 2026 – Kühlspot, Berlin
*** BIOs ***
Leverton Fox
Formed by Alex Bonney, Tim Giles and Matt Groom, Leverton Fox collage together a battery of musical inspiration, from noise and lo-fi electronics to free improvisation and psychedelia with a healthy dose of irreverence. The group produced their first LP, Country Dances (2009) for cult underground indie label Gravid Hands, recorded partly in a disused barn in Berkshire as well as a variety of North London’s grungy music rooms. Since Country Dances the group has had a new line up featuring Isambard Khroustaliov from acclaimed electronica duo Icarus in place of Matt Groom. With this new line up they toured the UK supporting the celebrated Norwegian improvising duo Humcrush, an experience that catalysed a new direction for the group, as presented on the albums The Human Arm (2012) and Smart Casual (2013). With their subsequent releases; the album Velcro Bird (2016), 12″ EP I Am Zebra (2019), the live album Foreign Object Worship – Århus Rites (2018) and infinite mixtape Megaskopz (2019) Leverton Fox cemented their reputation for both producing genre defying records and mind bending live performances. The COVID hiatus saw the group assemble in a woodland in the summer of 2021 to record In The Flicker (2022) a time-and-site-specific conversation between their other-worldly music, interspersed and influenced by the setting and the surrounding sounds of nature.
Alex Bonney
Alex Bonney is a trumpeter, electronic musician, recording / mix engineer and producer based in London. He was born in Reading in 1978 and grew up in the flight path of Concorde, instilling a deep attachment to subsonic frequencies. He performs internationally with several groups including Pando Pando, Leverton Fox, Scarla O’Horror, Brass Mask, light.box, Olie Brice’s Quintet and Octet, in duo with Will Glaser and Ed Begley as well as many informal improv collaborations with leading improvisers on the UK scene. He is also in demand in the studio and works for a great variety of artists on their album releases for leading record labels including ECM.
Tim Giles
Drummer, Tim Giles is an award-winning musician. Living in London, he is known for his collaborations with saxophonist James Allsopp, composer Riaan Vosloo, producer Ben Lamdin and other leading lights of the UK jazz and improvised music scene. A musical prodigy, (winning a Telegraph Jazz Award for his childhood prowess), Tim started out backing jazz musicians that visited his home county of Suffolk. Whilst still in his teens, Tim was performing internationally with saxophonists Iain Ballamy and Stan Sulzmann at events such as the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, and St Louis Jazz Festival and Senegal (providing support for the late Joe Zawinul). He left school at sixteen, and moved to London to be a full-time musician. Tim is now an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (ARAM), awarded in 2016 for his extensive work in the art of jazz drumming. He has played with an eclectic list of jazz musicians such as Jamie Cullum, Art Farmer, Charles McPherson, Peter Brötzmann, Ingrid Jensen, Myra Melford, Kenny Wheeler, Norma Winstone and Bobby Wellins.
Isambard Khroustaliov
Isambard Khroustaliov is the alias of electronic musician, composer and sound artist Sam Britton. Sam trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in London, but now works across the borders of music composition and performance, sound design and installation, software development and research. He holds a PhD in electronic music and composition and has been a resident composer and researcher at IRCAM in Paris and STEIM in Amsterdam. Sam has also worked with the London Sinfonietta as part of their Writing the Future commissioning scheme and with Aphex Twin on his Remote Orchestra project. Since 1997 he has recorded and released music for a number of independent electronic music labels in the UK, Europe and the US (PAN, Temporary Residence, The Leaf Label & Output Recordings) and performs internationally with his various groups, solo and in collaboration with numerous improvising musicians and ensembles.
Not Applicable
Not Applicable is a group of musicians, composers, visual artists and filmmakers collaboratively developingand openly prototyping new approaches to their respective artistic pursuits. Not Applicable is an openended framework which encompasses both the realisation and documentation of these collaborations inthe form of performances, installations, recordings, and films. Not Applicable Recordings put out its first recording in 2001 and to date the catalogue numbers over 80 releases, featuring collaborations with numerous international artists, including Icarus, Rudi Fischerlehner, Leverton Fox, Damo Suzuki, Ted Milton, Tom Arthurs, Isambard Khroustaliov, Oliver Duckert, Chris Sharkey, Maurizio Ravalico, Ollie Bown, Mieko Shimizu and Jasmine Morris. Not Applicable has also collaborated with and featured artwork and films by artists including: Anne Haaning, Joji Koyama, Kazland, Britt Hatzius, Martin Hampton, Philip Davies, Yannig Willmann, Atelier Elephant, Thomas Peter, Mads Westrup, Alexey Shahov, Sam Jacob, Will Alsop, Katrin Plavcak and Leonie Hampton.
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Release date: Friday 5th June 2026
Format: LP / DL
Cat No: NOT084
Artist: Leverton Fox
Title: Eternal Gong Bath of the Sunbed Mind
Label: Not Applicable
Side A:
01 Seals for Spronky
02 Serenade to a Blobfish (Subaqueous Sound System)
03 Sounding Balloons at the Kármán Line
Side B:
04 Sleeper Train
05 Socrates the Quail
06 Speculative Aerodynamic Problems of a Human Headed Winged Lion
Credits
Alex Bonney – electronics, trumpet
Tim Giles – electronic, drums
Isambard Khroustaliov – electronics
Recorded by Alex Bonney at New River Studios
Mixed by Leverton Fox at Coda to Coda
Mastered and cut by Stuart Hawkes at Metropolis
Artwork by Atelier Elephant
Pressed by Seabass Vinyl
©! Not Applicable 2026