Introducing Shell Company & Older Brother – Shards

Shell Company & Older Brother tap into the Mancunian continuum to deliver heavy sounds for heavy times on Shards, their debut release on Numbers, out in full on April 18, 2025. The single, 4U (Luv Thing) is out everywhere now.

4U
IT’S NOT A LOVE THING
BUT IT’S A LOVE THING
IT’S NOT A LOVE THING
BUT IT’S A LOVE THING

→Listen to 4U (Luv Thing) and preorder Shards

Born from voice notes sent between London and Lisbon, the release took shape remotely before being recorded inside Manchester’s The White Hotel, then refined in the sonic labs of Numbers and La Chunky in Glasgow.

Set across one night, Shards is a fragment of the never ending process of breakdown and placing pieces back together. Along four tracks, the voices of Shell Company (Rosabella Allen) and Older Brother begin far apart, then argue, reflect and collide, trying to find the ground they stand on, with the music laid by brothers Rob and Chris Banks. The two voices work both together and against each other, rendering images that could only exist in limbo: running taps, cans on the floor, and crumbling walls.

Older Brother met Shell Company at their first London show at Spanners, where they all returned in March 2025, this time together – live dates below.

Shell Company & Older Brother say of the release —

“Shards is a scream that sings softly. A record that shifts between confusion and sense, hopelessness and hope. Despite moments of intense and perfect connection, the shards rarely fit. Shards is a record not about giving up, but giving in. A recording of the victory that comes from surrendering to float, all because ‘it will all make sense one day’. Shards is about love that begins and ends with broken pieces.”

Preorder Shards on vinyl and listen to the single 4U (Luv Thing) now.

Shell Company & Older Brother Live Dates
14 March – Salford, The White Hotel – tickets
15 March – London, Spanners – tickets
18 April – Glasgow, Numbers @ Exit

____________

Shell Company & Older Brother – Shards
Vinyl / Digital • 18 April 2025
Numbers • NMBRS77

1. Shard
2. 4U (Luv Thing) – Listen now
3. 10AM
4. In The Silence It Only Gets Louder

Written by Shell Company & Older Brother
Recorded by Jonathan Barrett in The White Hotel
Additional Vocals on 4U (Luv Thing) by Elsa Berzigotti-Williams
Mixed by CM and Rob Banks in Numbers and La Chunky
Mastered by Noel Summerville
Artwork by Ben Drury
Artwork Photography by Ben Jackson & Rosabella Allen
Artist Photography by Ben Jackson
Numbers 2025 • NMBRS77

Subscribe to our mailing list

Presenting Unspecified Enemies – Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback

Single title track out 14 February. Seven-track debut album NMBRS66 arrives 28 March on vinyl and digital.

“It’s the microelectronic sound of a city playing strange light games with itself, evoking bitcrushed desires and floating images, an urban phantasy stored on the broken circuits of an Ensoniq ASR-10.” – Louis Digital

→Listen to and order Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback

The origins of Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback trace back to 2006, when Louis Digital launched Diamond Sea, a series of events at London’s ICA that introduced the Unspecified Enemies project and a label called City of Quartz. The vision was to merge the hi-tech electronic textures of contemporary R&B with the sampling and sequencing techniques of pioneers like Anthony Shakir and Soundhack. However, the music was lost in time, and City of Quartz never released a single record.

Yet, the story took an unexpected turn. At one of these events, Spencer from Numbers received a CD containing early recordings. Years later, Numbers encouraged Louis Digital to reconstruct the lost music for an album. The result is a work resurrected from the past and reimagined for the future—retrieved in fragments from a broken Iomega Jazz SCSI Drive.

Expanding on the album’s themes, Louis Digital reflects:

“By the late ’90s the cinematic image of Los Angeles and the sound of Detroit techno had crystallised a new style of living in time and space. In 1997 Mike Davis — the political activist, urbanist, writer and historian of Los Angeles — suggested that it all had “something to do with a microelectronic aesthetic of very transient and decaying states”. It was a romantic vision — one where the city’s glass surfaces reflected a musical desire for futurity not yet dominated by data-driven corporate life. These were strange days to live through. This album evokes the embers of this fibre-optic moment, when urban revolution in an age of digital reification still felt possible.”

The album features full sleeve artwork and a poster designed by Ben Drury. 

Listen to the NTS show Romance and Reification, exploring the cinematic and electronic music influences behind the album.

“The cult electro-techno project returns with a debut album that revives abandoned early ’00s material into a masterpiece of machine funk.” – Resident Advisor RA Recommends

“100% Total KO” – Boomkat

____________

Unspecified Enemies — Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback
Vinyl / Digital • 28 March 2025
Numbers • NMBRS66

1. Mathematics Parc
2. Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback – Listen now
3. Glass Skin
4. Nixon/Volcker (Mezzanine Level)
5. Yield Compressor
6. Her Husband is a Lawyer
7. Bonaventure Effect

Order Romance in the Age of Adaptive Feedback now and listen to the title track everywhere.

Written and produced by Louis Digital for Unspecified Enemies
Additional music data generated by CiM (Ann Aimee, Delsin)
Artwork by Ben Drury
Mastered by Beau Thomas at Ten Eight Seven
Numbers 2025 • NMBRS66

Subscribe to our mailing list

Jack Revill – our best friend, our brother, our DJ.

Where do we begin? Let’s start with celebrating some of our memories of the Jack we love. Jack co-founded this thing we call Numbers, and drove us all to do bigger and better – no matter whether that manifested in a massive party, 12” release or a conga line through the club, which he both started on the decks, and subsequently led from the front. He was serious about his hair and even more serious about his music.

At Numbers, Jack was absolutely instrumental in us signing and finishing records with SOPHIE, Hudson Mohawke, Rustie, two of his many heroes Lory D and DJ Deeon, Deadboy aka Al Wootton, Redinho, Jessie Ware & SBTRKT, Denis Sulta, Jamie xx, Mosca and Kornél Kovács. He played a major role in doing the groundwork to make those releases as great as they could be.

Even before we formed the Numbers label, members of our team were involved in a myriad of different labels and projects from 2002—he was integral to so many of them. These included Seismic, Wireblock, Dress 2 Sweat, Stuffrecords, Seldom Felt, and Point.One with Neil Arabi. Through these record labels, clubs and Numbers, Jack helped us bring music to the wider world.

Jack was key, doing everything he could to make sure we were releasing music that we believed in. He could spot a hook in a demo from a mile away and get to the core of the idea. From the cutting edge, to the Tweak-A-Holics to the club bangers, he wanted to do it all – listing Prince, Aphex Twin and Drexciya as his North Stars.

This is the man who was equally at home asking his pals to put him inside a suitcase and carry it down three flights of Glasgow tenement stairs, as he was experiencing fine art and design, or leading a musical expedition on a Manhattan rooftop. At our first London warehouse party, someone tweeted at him to turn the sound up. Jack, deep in the mix, sent back some patter and obliged.

At Rubadub Records, he and Calum aka Spencer, shared a Saturday job and were paid in records from the age of 15. Jack stood on the shoulders of many a giant, whether it was our pals from round the corner or the Teachers we revered from afar, further cementing Rubadub’s role as one of THE means of listening to underground dance music from Chi-town and the Motor City of Detroit, via Glasgow to mainland Europe and Around The World. His years of service evolved from making the tea, cataloguing and mopping the shop, to playing at Club 69 in Paisley. Eventually, he was at Rubadub Distribution, bringing forward artists and labels such as Marco Passarani, Fatima Yamaha, Objekt, Night Slugs, Huntleys & Palmers—including Jack’s work on SOPHIE’s very first record ‘Nothing More to Say’—Sunklo, Karenn, and Call Super, to name just a few.

People really gravitated towards Jack. He certainly wasn’t shy about himself, but he also wanted the world to know about his friends and the music he loved. He was the great connector – the Mastermixer – and if you have ever bumped into him anywhere from a dodgem to the previously mentioned conga lines you will know all about it.

There are many nights that stand out. A 17-year-old Jack – too young to be in the club – docking time from the set of first-signing, Sparky for showing up late to the debut Numbers party in 2003; or the nights in Stereo with Joker and Rustie where we had to form a human barrier to stop people diving into the booth. At Pleasure Principle, Cornwall in 2013, he hosted a ‘Kosmik Karaoke’ session with a demo version of karaoke software only allowing for 30 seconds to be played of each song – he and SDC had to get creative with the mic interludes. He later burst into a caravan full of strangers after a TV was being launched out of a window and got them all out on the dance floor chanting John Talabot’s name, in the presence of Aphex Twin who came along as a punter.

He loved Numbers parties and alongside the rest of us did everything as a team – from going out at night to guerrilla poster as a squad, to doing the door even when he was the headline act. He always put the work in and helped to foster a community purely for the love of the music, completely separate to any fame or attention or brand building. That approach is Jack and it’s also in the DNA of Glasgow.

It might surprise you but his 10,000 hours of practice DJing and sharpening his ear was already long-completed on belt drive turntables by the age of 17 with Spencer, his brother Sean, his dad Alan and a whole load of school-friends in Jack’s house.

As a DJ his capacity for booting us all off the decks was unparalleled. He had the gift. He knew what frequencies worked and was in service of the dancers. He heard energy and feeling in music, not genre.

The memories and the music will stay with us forever, as will Jack Revill.

<3

Ephemera is the debut album by Fergus Jones, the artist formerly known as Perko, an Edinburgh-born, Copenhagen-based producer, DJ and founder of the FELT record label. The nine-track release is out now.

→Buy and stream Ephemera

Ephemera was developed with collaborative energy as the creative priority, produced by Jones alongside an extensive list of like-minded musicians, lyricists and vocalists including Huerco S, James K, Koreless, Birthmark, ELDON and Withdrawn of Bristol’s Cold Light crew, Laila Sakini and Lia T. The album embodies Jones’ inner journey as he ranges further than ever sonically and emotionally, emphasising instinct, intensity, tactility and rapture.

In his own words, Jones says “This album was made over the last five years in various studio and outdoor locations around the world, reflecting my ongoing emphasis on natural collaboration as a creative ideal. It’s my most personal record yet, written with experimentation and an open attitude as guiding lights.”

“Heima” was written and produced with Huerco S and James K between Iceland, Copenhagen and the United States’ East Coast. Developed during and named after the same Icelandic artist residency that birthed Perko & Huerco S’ debut co-production “Prang,” “Heima” is a shimmering piece of fortified trip-pop featuring vocals from James K, appearing here following solo releases for AD 93 and collaborations with Yves Tumor. “Tight Knit” aligns Jones’ graceful production with the raw and restless emotions thundering from the performances of Birthmark, ELDON and Withdrawn of Cold Light, the shadowy Bristolian collective channelling the city’s deep sonic history into an equally rich future.

The album makes a distinctive impact that reverberates and glows long after its runtime. Analogue audio sculpting, adaptive processes and imaginative approaches to creating sound are at the forefront – whether resulting from an endless exchange of iterative stems with Huerco S, or hydrophone recordings with Koreless. Evocative vocal performances and songwriting combine with weighty sound design, gliding easily between the organic and synthetic to reflect and expand the thin spaces of transcendence in each.

Ephemera follows three prior releases on Numbers under the Perko alias – 2018’s NV Auto, 2020’s The City Rings, and 2023’s Prang, which was included on Resident Advisor’s Best Tracks of 2023. Jones has contributed DJ mixes to the long-running FACT and Truants series, is a frequent guest on radio stations such as NTS and Rinse, and has toured globally.

____________

Fergus Jones — Ephemera
Vinyl / Digital • 18 October 2024
Numbers • NMBRS74

1. Yield
2. Heima with Huerco S. and James K
3. Tight Knit with Birthmark, ELDON and Withdrawn
4. Stack
5. Can’t Touch with Laila Sakini
6. Heap
7. It Should Be (Free) with Huerco S.
8. A Leap with Lia T
9. Been Here (And Gone) with Koreless

Written and produced by Fergus Jones
with
2 Brian Leeds and James K
3 Birthmark, ELDON and Withdrawn
5 Laila Sakini
7 Brian Leeds
8 Lia Tsesmelis
9 Lewis Roberts

Mixed by Michael James Thomas at Studio Moonchord
Co-produced by Michael James Thomas on 2, 3 & 5
Excerpt of 020301 by Opiate / Thomas Knak on 8
Mastered by Noel Summerville
Artwork by Ben Drury
Artwork Photography by Paweł Rogowski
Artist Photography Courtesy of Fergus Jones

BUY VINYL + DIGITAL

Bandcamp • Rubadub • Boomkat • Rush Hour

STREAM

Apple Music • Spotify

Subscribe to our mailing list