The Sirens SHOLTO

• 1 Smooth Sailing 03:05
• 2 Persephone's Perception 03:04
• 3 EL Faro 04:48
• 4 Tied to the Mast 05:06
• 5 Drowning in You (Interlude) 01:39
• 6 Ghibli's Dream 03:00
• 7 Temptress 03:00
• 8 Lamia 02:22
• 9 Purple Flow 03:24
• 10 On the Rocks 04:18
• 11 Swampland of the Soul 03:17
• 12 Invisible Conductor of the Orchestra (Come With Me) 03:53
• Total Runtime 40:56

Info for The Sirens

The Sirens is SHOLTO’s most emotionally ambitious record yet—a rich, dreamlike dive into desire, doubt, and duality. Drawing on ancient myths and personal turbulence, the album drifts between beauty and danger, temptation and restraint. It’s a record full of shimmering textures, haunted spaces, and tender confrontations with the self.

Where SHOLTO’s earlier work often floated in the ambient and ethereal, 'The Sirens' feels more grounded, still beautiful, but shadowed, with more weight and tension. Each track moves like a tide, pushing and pulling between clarity and confusion, control and surrender. Strings, harp, jazz drums, and soft electronics melt together in songs that feel more like short films than traditional compositions.

It opens with 'Smooth Sailing' (ft. Phoebe Coco), a track that drifts like a half-remembered dream. It’s gentle on the surface, but carries emotional depth beneath, about how even ease can be uneasy, and how stillness doesn’t always mean peace. That central lyric, “today the clouds looked like mountains, why don’t we climb them?” captures the record’s tone: curious, searching, quietly aching.

Next comes 'Persephone’s Perception', a myth retold from the inside out. Here, Persephone isn’t dragged into darkness—she chooses it. A steady groove and euphoric string breaks carry the track forward, weaving between light and shadow. It’s bold, meditative, and full of movement, both musically and emotionally.

'Tied To the Mast' is the album’s most intense moment; a stormy, glitch-laced epic inspired by Odysseus resisting the call of the sirens. It starts ghostly and fractured, then drops into a heavy groove before dissolving into a sparse, drifting coda. The storm hits hard, then leaves you in the quiet aftermath.

In contrast, 'Ghibli’s Dream' is the album’s lightest, most joyful offering. Warm and nostalgic, it was inspired by the surreal tenderness of Studio Ghibli films, and a cat SHOLTO used to hang out with. It’s playful and glowing, a moment of surrender to joy before the shadows return. As the album’s focus track, it captures the sweetness that lives right on the edge of something more complicated.

Elsewhere, tracks like 'El Faro' and 'Purple Flow' act as warnings; gentle, fog-drenched, but loaded with tension. 'Temptress' is slow, smoky, and intimate, while 'Swampland of the Soul' takes a deeper dive into the emotional spaces we often avoid—grief, uncertainty, inner murk.

It all lands with 'Invisible Conductor of the Orchestra (Come With Me)', a quiet, poetic finale featuring Lea Petges. It’s part lullaby, part invitation, part trap. The question is: Do you follow? It doesn’t resolve the journey, but it does distil it.

Recorded between SFJ Studios and Total Refreshment Centre, 'The Sirens' was written, produced, and largely performed by SHOLTO, with contributions from long-time collaborators including Phoebe Coco, Thomas McBrien, Syd Kemp, and Rachel Kitchlew. The result is a tactile, immersive world built on strings, synths, silence, and emotion.

This isn’t a record that wraps things up neatly. 'The Sirens' leaves things open, hovering somewhere between seduction and surrender, between myth and memory. It’s a love letter to the parts of ourselves we don’t always want to look at, but probably should.

Oscar Sholto Robertson, drums, keyboards, guitar, bass, flute, percussion, vocals
Phoebe Coco, vocals
Lea Petges, vocals
Syd Kemp, bass
Thomas McBrien, piano, keyboards
Rachel Kitchlew, harp
Clementine Brown, violin, viola
Sebrina Lambert Rose, cello
Arthur Sajas, flute

Engineered by Oscar Sholto Robertson, Syd Kemp & David Bardon
Recorded at SFJ Studios & Total Refreshment Centre, London
Pre-mastered by Jasper Geluk
Mastered by Doug Krebs
Co-produced by Syd Kemp (Track 8)
Produced & Mixed by Oscar Sholto Robertson

Oscar Sholto Robertson
London Born Oscar ‘SHOLTO’ Robertson’s music career began in 2013, when a record deal took him to LA, leading to him working with producers like Nick Waterhouse (Allah-Las) before returning to the UK and working with the likes of Inflo (Cleo Sol), and Dan Carey. He is also one half of the production / studio duo SFJ. Recording, Producing & Mixing for artists such as Miles Kane, Katy J Pearson, Wet Leg, Spiritualized, Tess Parks and many more. Sholto also garnered a name as a session drummer across genres working with acts such as Confidence Man, Nick Waterhouse, Yak, Sinead O’Brien, Geowulf & recently Baxter Dury. SHOLTO has recently supported Sven Wunder, Derya Yildrim, WITCH & Dina Ogon and recently performed a tribute to David Axelrod at Londons Jazz Cafe

His writing style is inspired by soundtrack composers from the 1950s-1970s, and he sits alongside soulful widescreen soundtrack contemporaries like The Cinematic Orchestra, Robohands and The Ironsides. 2023’s ‘The Changing Tides Of Dreams’ introduced listeners to his world of psychedelic-infused, hazy arrangements, drawing on disciplines from the world of film & classical music, as well as jazz and experimental arrangement techniques. His music invites you into a warm array of colours, lush analogue gooeyness, instrumental grooves and a Euphoric sentimentality.

This album contains no booklet.