Justin K Broadrick (JK Flesh, Jesu, Napalm Death, Godflesh) assumes his ultimate atmospheric form as Final - his longest running project, since he was 13! - with the liminal experience of this new album for Lawrence English’s Room 40.

Inspired by childhood fantasies of being invisible, Broadrick’s latest in a 40+ year line of recordings extinguishes any semblance of his ruder, rhythm-driven self, in favour of puristic tonal expression. He’s still there, albeit as a quietly incandescent presence, dematerialising detuned oscillators into elemental pressure and shadowplay.

In his own words: “The theme of this recording is the invisible world, and one's (my) need for it. It's necessary for me, this idea of the invisible world, if I am to function on a daily basis. I find comfort in knowing that this is all not just us here and now, that there's something else around us. That there's something within us, that isn't just this frail skin and bones and the immediate environments we drag ourselves around. I am sure since I was a child, that within me I am many, I am more than this. I surely can't be just this, so I am motivated by the fantasy and/or promise of more…”

Where too often work in this paradigm can fall into anodyne torpor or overbearing conceptualism, ‘What we Don’t See’ burns with a ferocity that swerves tired quiet/loud tropes, instead leaning into the spaces between solemnity, melancholy, and frailty with emotional nuance. Broadrick seems to always channel lived experience in a way that feels convincing rather than contrived, negotiating spiritual pluralities with an elemental grasp of ambiguity that guides his transition from the sustained glower of ‘Bodyless’ to the fugged resolution of ‘Behind Me’ via the stately sweep of ‘Only in Dreams’ and into the keening, microtonal, ‘Inbetween You’.