January 15, 2025

Sandwell District returns with ‘End Beginnings’ at end of March 2025, first track available now

Bernard - Side-Line Staff January 15, 2025
Sandwell District Steve Gullick

Sandwell District (Photo by Steve Gullick)

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Sandwell District – Karl O’Connor (Regis) & David Sumner (Function) – have announced details of a new album, “End Beginnings”, out 28 March 2025 via The Point of Departure label.

You can already listen to a first track, “Hidden“.

The new album sees the duo return with an unexpected follow up to their 2010 album, “Feed-Forward”. “End Beginnings” has its roots in underground techno (Motor City and 80s European industrial electro comes to mind), while injecting new elements.

“End Beginnings” is also a tribute to visual artist Juan Mendez [Silent Servant]. Soon after the box set reissue of their debut album, at the beginning of 2024, Mendez tragically died. He was working on a piece of art entitled ‘End Beginnings’ that was bound to be the album cover. That work was never finished, but O’Connor and Sumner took the title to honour their friend’s contribution.

The initial catalyst for Sandwell District’s reunion was unexpected so O’Connor explains, “I struck up a really close friendship with Mark Lanegan before he died. Which was weird. Mark Lanegan – king of grunge, friend of Kurt Cobain – he told me to keep going, to revisit Sandwell District.”

It took time for relations to thaw, “You have to decentralise the ego for the good of the project,” O’Connor explains, and, with the lessons of their fractious relationship of the past learned, O’Connor and Sumner worked on the album remotely – in London and Berlin and brought in Simon Shreeve, Mika HallbĂ€ck (Rivet), Seth Horvitz (Rrose) and Sarah Kranz (Sarah Wreath) to add to the collaborative spirit the collective has always benefited from.

About Sandwell District

Sandwell District are a collective that originally grew from the Downwards label that Peter Sutton [Female] and Karl O’Connor [Regis] established in 1993.

The collective – whose members have included Sutton, O’Connor, David Sumner (Function), and Juan Mendez (Silent Servant) – wanted to reinvent techno. “Feed-Forward”, Sandwell District’s debut album, arrived in late 2010.

The Point of Departure reissued the album in 2023 as a limited edition 3xLP box set, which sold out immediately, and a new 12-track compilation, “Where Next ?”, featuring tracks by Function, Silent Servant, Regis and more followed in February 2024.

First Sandwell District dates

  • 17 Jan – OHM, Berlin
  • 24 Jan – Garage Noord, Amsterdam
  • 31 Jan – Venue MOT, London
author avatar
Bernard - Side-Line Staff Chief editor
Bernard Van Isacker is the Chief Editor of Side-Line Magazine. With a career spanning more than two decades, Van Isacker has established himself as a respected figure in the darkwave scene.
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