by Ben Hogwood, with text lifted from the press release

Electronic musician BUNKR, the project under which James Dean operates, has announced new album Signal for release on 24 April 2026. The long player is prefaced by the release of two new tracks, 96 Refraction and Eyes Like Mirrors.

96 Refraction channels a drum and bass beat similar to what you might have heard in that year, with some deeply appealing widescreen musical movement, BUNKR’s music projecting into the distance. Eyes Like Mirrors covers a similarly large space, with washes of ambient sound that drift like spray.

On his Bandcamp page, BUNKR sets the scene for the new album. “It began with a flash of light over the Surrey Hills. A phosphorescent sphere pierced the night sky above Pitch Hill then promptly vanished as quickly as it had appeared, witnessed by a group of friends and later reported in the local papers. Stranger still was its proximity to the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, tucked deep in the woods nearby. Whether cosmic or coincidental, the moment left its mark — a signal from elsewhere, fleeting but unforgettable…”

The new album “is shaped by these formative encounters with space, sound, and the unknown…” while musically it “expands BUNKR’s world of detailed, immersive electronics. Shimmering ambient textures drift against polyrhythmic patterns and breaks; synth lines pulse like coded transmissions; fragments of rave energy flicker and dissolve into wide, cinematic soundscapes.”

As James says, it promises to be “a record rooted in the landscapes of youth, but tuned to the infinite possibilities of the horizon.”

Published post no.2,832 – Friday 20 March 2026