Loula Yorke released Starling Sessions on 4 September 2026 through the Truxalis label, catalogue number TRX031. The eight tracks were improvised on a Make Noise Shared System borrowed from the musician Luke Sanger.
How it was recorded
Yorke had the system for just over a week and recorded eight sessions in as many days. Make Noise has discontinued the Shared System, which packaged a set of the company's own modules into one case.
The album runs to eight tracks. The shortest, Nestlings, is just over a minute; the longest, A Vision of Life, is five and a half minutes. The other titles are Construction Song, Broody, Embryonic, Boing Boing, Round the Clock and Sister Fledge.
According to the release notes, a pair of starlings were raising a brood of chicks in the roof of the Cottage Studio where Yorke works, and the birds' calls and constant movement became the starting point for the pieces. Yorke describes the result as “like a series of reflective chambers, lit up by the warmth of a distorted sine to reveal obsidian walls etched with cadmium and gold”.
Yorke composed, recorded and produced the album. Dave Stitch mastered it. Truxalis says the Shared System shows the sound design principles Make Noise built its own modules around, which is part of why the set was sought after before it went out of production.
Price and availability
Starling Sessions is out now on Bandcamp. The limited edition CD digipak is £10 or more and the digital album is £8 or more.
