Six years, one cover, and the album Lillian Albazi and Oscar Neyland had to make

Bright Phantoms began with a Rowland S. Howard cover in 2021 and became a document of friendship, loss and the sea.

Told by Paige Turner · 7 October 2026

Six years to make one album sounds either precious or impossible, but Lillian Albazi and Oscar Neyland spent that time doing what most people won't: sitting with an idea until it told them what it actually was. Bright Phantoms, the Naarm-based duo's debut, brings voice and double bass together in a restless, richly textured sound world that weaves post-punk, folk, modern classical, noise, found percussion, free improvisation and rock into something that refuses to stay still.

The project began in 2021 with an experimental recording of Rowland S. Howard's 'Autoluminescent', the closing track on Albazi's debut album After-Image. Australian music writer Des Cowley wrote in Rhythms Magazine that the duo "digging deep inside the song's despairing lyrics" suggested "one future direction her work might take". What began on a whim became a six-year process of recording, experimentation and reflection, driven by a shared love of the sea, the loss of friends and the shifting landscapes of life.

Recorded patiently over six years with Pat Telfer at Brian Brown Recording Studios VCA and Sydney Rd Studios, the album expanded beyond its original voice-and-double-bass format into a broader sonic world. It brings together works by Colin Stetson, Nick Cave, ANOHNI, Björk and Adrianne Lenker, with contributions from James Sherlock on guitar, Niran Dasika on trumpet, Elliot Lamb on trombone and Natasha Fearnside on bass clarinet, alongside found sound, poetry, analogue manipulation and extended instrumental techniques.

The last time Bright Phantoms appeared on stage in its original duo form was at Melbourne Recital Centre in 2022. After that, the project expanded with loop-based backing for smaller shows around Australia, revealing a larger sound world that ultimately needed the space and time of the studio to fully realise. These performances showed what the work could become, but the album is what it actually became: a slow burn built from bass, voice, found sound, poetry and a shared willingness to follow an idea wherever it might lead.

At its centre is the interplay between double bass and voice — layered echoes and tidal harmonies moving through dissonant extended techniques, abrasive textures and moments of quiet reflection. The record grew through connections with a small community of musicians and friends, with each contribution becoming part of its evolving shape, built slowly and deliberately rather than rushed into existence because someone said it was time.

The album launches 7 November at Bennetts Lane Jazz Club in Brunswick. Six years after that first recording of 'Autoluminescent', Albazi and Neyland are presenting the work not as a conclusion but as a genesis — a beginning born from patience, experimentation, friendship and the enduring possibility of making something together.

Most albums are made in months because that's the deal, the budget, the attention span. This one took six years because grief and friendship don't work on a schedule, and neither does the sea.