Album Review: All India Radio - The Unified Field (2025)

Stuart Ball
13 hours ago
5 min read

Written: 19th October 2025

All India Radio is a long-running musical project from Tasmania, founded in 1998 by multi-instrumentalist Martin Kennedy, which blends elements of ambient, post-rock and cinematic electronica to create atmospheric soundscapes. Often instrumental and richly textured, the music draws on influences ranging from dream pop to downtempo, offering a listening experience that is both immersive and reflective. With a catalogue spanning numerous albums, All India Radio has steadily built a distinctive style marked by shimmering guitar work, spacious arrangements and a contemplative mood. The project’s music has featured in film and television, making it a familiar sound to some even if the name is not. The release of The Unified Field follows a temporary hiatus for the band as Kennedy and co-conspirator Mark Wendt are back with the same line up (completed by Ben Sims) that recorded their acclaimed Echo Other album.

Opening track, The Red Room is a post-rock elegy for David Lynch and without doubt, the dreamlike, ethereal nature of the music ties in with the director’s vision of the world. Spoken word sections (using the words of David Lynch) intertwine with thoughtful guitar and heavenly synths. Chord transitions are exquisitely timed and as befits a band of this nature, the song, albeit only three and a half minutes long, does not feel rushed in any way. A sense of introspection invites listeners to reflect on the duality of life, where intelligence and universal love coexist with darker emotions. The video that accompanies the track is a clear homage to Twin Peaks and helps to further illustrate the band’s examination of the feelings expressed here.

Wisteria – possibly named after the working title of an incomplete project by David Lynch - leans more heavily into the band’s post-rock influences. An oscillating bass line – which reoccurs throughout the track - introduces the track before sonorous, crystalline guitar takes the lead. Shimmering, hazy synths swirl in the background and are followed by a nostalgic atmosphere which comes to the fore, measured percussion adding some drive to the track. Moments of pure, astral ambience bring a feeling of peace and the use of acoustic guitar adds another layer of verdancy to the song’s conclusion. Crystallinity is another excellent example of All India Radio’s use of space and patience. There is a comforting, metronomic feel that accentuates the lucid, wistful mood.

Catch The Breeze is a cover of the shoegaze classic by Slowdive, a band for which All India Radio clearly have much admiration. Although sticking to the slow development and build up of layers of the original, this version definitely has the stamp of All India Radio. Saturated guitars, Lisa Gibbs’s diaphanous vocals and the transcendent lyrics all contribute to the atmosphere of emotional detachment and quiet reflection. The song suggests surrendering to time’s flow, embracing change and finding solace in stillness, memory and the beauty of impermanence. Hey, are you feeling something new / Just watch the rain, it helps in all you do / The breeze, it blows, it blows everything / And I, I want the world to pass / And I, I want the sun to shine. It is a beautifully restrained reimagining that invites listeners to slow down, reflect and lose themselves in its immersive, meditative atmosphere, proving that subtlety can be just as powerful as grandeur. “From the late 1980s to the early 90s, I lived and breathed UK shoegaze music,” says Martin Kennedy. “My band at the time was starting to get serious, and I desperately wanted that sound, particularly Slowdive's 'Catch The Breeze', which for me melded ambient music, which I also loved, so perfectly with the melodic fuzzed-out bliss of shoegaze. It didn't work out that way with my band, and only recently I asked myself - should I recreate one of my all-time favourite shoegaze songs? Why the heck not!’”

While each track on The Unified Field is rooted in the identity of All India Radio, there is enough variety across the nine songs to maintain the listener’s interest. Uplift, ambient in nature, moves with a glacial grace that draws us closer while allowing us to lose ourselves in the velvet hush of its liminal drift. Drifting begins in a similar fashion but here, chords dripping with reverb are voiced with spacious delicacy, each note almost suspended in the air before the arrival of the next. It further reveals the band's unhurried compositional instinct and delivers some of their most spatially expansive sonics.

The seven minute title track is the longest on the album and it is here that All India Radio employ all the tools in their musical arsenal. A celestial and nebulous opening drifts through the speakers for the first two minutes creating the feeling of halcyon memories and seraphic calm. The first two minutes remain nearly motionless in their musical design, and when a slowly strummed guitar finally breaks the stillness, it introduces something chimeric and noctilucent - both elusive and luminous. These chords are widely spaced over the next two minutes, giving the listener room to reflect on the openness and quiet magnitude of the piece. The tempo and dynamics swell briefly after the four-minute mark, before a delightfully elongated coda carries us into a state of blissful drift, as if floating weightlessly through the cosmos.

Penultimate track Everything That Exists Anywhere – a highlight of the collection - adds to the diversity of the overall album. It emerges slowly, drawing the listener into its unfolding current. Eddying synthesisers that float like vapour, gradually reveal echo-drenched guitar and a pulse that moves with quiet force. Each shift feels sculpted, inviting close attention even in its stillest moments. Just after the four-minute mark, the music converges and surges forward, reaching the most intense and concentrated moment on the album. Water of Life serves as the perfect counterpart to Everything That Exists Anywhere but also stands on its own as a fitting conclusion, with its focus on ambient textures and slow-building form, unfolding with a kind of fractal logic, each layer revealing new patterns and subtle shifts. As it fades, it leaves behind an ephemeral trace, a quiet suggestion that there is always more to explore.

The Unified Field is a confident continuation of All India Radio’s journey through ambient post-rock, shaped by a clear vision and a deep understanding of sonic space. With nods to the cinematic surrealism of David Lynch and a respectful reimagining of Slowdive’s shoegaze legacy, the album moves through a range of moods and textures. Without doubt, if you like one track on The Unified Field, you will like them all. It is a work that thrives on nuance and restraint, offering listeners a chance to engage with music that unfolds slowly with intention. As the band themselves put it, “If you like slow burning ambient post-rock, with deep space between notes and David Lynch-ian undercurrents of mysticism and extra-dimensional whispers, then our new album The Unified Field is for you.” Listening to this album feels like stepping into a quiet storm where memory, mystery and meaning swirl in a kaleidoscopic drift that stays with you long after the final note fades. Weightless. Immersive. Hypnotic.

The Unified Field is released on 31st October 2025.

All India Radio online: