Submotion Orchestra return with their long awaited sixth studio album, Passed Me By

8 years after their last LP Kites, Submotion Orchestra return on May 8th with their long awaited sixth studio album, the remarkable Passed Me By. A deeply personal journey into memory, creativity, and the passing of time, it shows the band continuing to push their signature live electronic sound forward, and the result is some of the boldest and most emotional territory of their storied career.

Alongside their album release, the band will also embark on a headline UK tour.

After a period of looking back at their earlier work, which resulted in the two Unplugged collections as well as a tour with the Prism String Ensemble, the band reconvened in 2024 to start developing new material, which saw its first demonstration with the Five Points EP. With the band feeling freed up to explore fresher sounds and textures, and seeing the rapturous response to the new material at their live tours during 2024, this spurred the intense period of writing and recording that has culminated in Passed Me By. With band member and pianist Taz Modi taking the production helm, the band looked inward, examining how life events affect creativity and individual purpose, and what it means to still be making music together after such a long period. As singer Ruby Wood says, ‘these songs reflect where we are in our lives now – they question, reminisce and trace the hopes and dreams that never quite leave you’.

The album opens with ‘Midlife Kicker’, showcasing the band’s new palette of electronic textures. As Modi says, ‘I came across the expression ‘midlife kicker’ by accident, and it refers to the minor upgrade a product can receive to extend its selling period. This seemed like a particularly wry way of referring not only to any band that carries on making music together, but also anyone approaching their forties – you start young and with endless energy, but then as time goes on and you get older, that relentless forward momentum changes shape’. This exploration of time continues with the title track ‘Passed Me By’, one of the most propulsive and catchy tunes of their entire career. ‘In any walk of life, but particularly in a creative industry, it’s pretty difficult to not wonder how you’ve ended up in the place you have – whether that’s what you originally saw for yourself, what chances and opportunities were missed, how things could have been different’, says Wood. ‘The track explicitly deals with those echoes of where you saw yourself going in life versus where you end up’.

‘Rearview Mirror’ continues the theme, examining the cyclical patterns of behaviour and asking what, if anything, we learn from our experiences, and provides a powerful showcase for Bobby Beddoe’s integral flugelhorn. ‘It was nice to get the chance to dirty my horn up a bit’, says Bobby, ‘as it often sounds very beautiful on our previous work. But I felt that the more complicated themes of the tune deserved a more gritty tone’.

‘Ten Years (intro)’ takes an ambient, jazz-flecked left-turn into melancholic territory, and acts as a palette cleanser before ‘Ten Years’ itself, certain to become one of the band’s magnum opuses. Exploring the difficulties of sticking to the path you’ve chosen in life, and alluding to the realities of making a living in a creative world that’s getting harder and harder to sustain, Wood delivers a powerful vocal that builds to a climax unlike any previously explored by the band. ‘One and Done’ deals with the main change in midlife – the arrival of children – with the band exploring more cinematic territory than usual, while the atmospheric ‘Unravelling’ ties up the various themes explored so far. ‘There’s really three moments in ‘Unravelling’, explains Modi. ‘Firstly, looking back at what seemed like the endless freedom of your youth, followed by the impact of all the responsibilities of adult life. And finally to stop it being too depressing, a hopeful look forward at when perspective will return and things won’t seem as intense as they do now’.

Finally with the blissful openness of ‘Tearing Down the Walls’, the album ends on a tentatively optimistic note, which belies the positive experience of the band in creating the record. ‘I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve achieved with Passed Me By’, says Wood, ‘and I’m proud of us as a band too – 17 years together and still able to create new bodies of work despite having busy lives and living at opposite ends of the country’.

Passed Me By will be available on vinyl and digitally from May 8th and is supported by a run of UK dates:

May 12 Gorilla, Manchester
May 13 Chalk, Brighton
May 14 Beacon, Bristol
May 15 Earth, London
May 19 Hare and Hounds, Birmingham
May 20 MK11, Milton Keynes
May 21 Wardrobe, Leeds