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Squid’s Anton Pearson Maps a Solo Turn on Debut Ambient Album Driving Through Belgium
Squid guitarist Anton Pearson announces his debut solo ambient album, Driving Through Belgium, led by the expansive Tintinnabulation I and a production approach that reframes his work beyond the band format.
Anton Pearson, best known as Squid’s guitarist, is stepping out with his first solo full-length, Driving Through Belgium, due July 3 on World Of Echo. The move lands less than a year after Squid’s Cowards, a record that pushed the band’s post-punk framework into stranger, more textural territory, and Pearson’s new material picks up that thread from a different angle: slower, quieter, and more interior.
The album’s first preview, Tintinnabulation I, stretches out as a long-form ambient piece built on tension rather than release. Pearson describes aiming for something “between disorientation and hope,” and the track follows that brief closely, moving from unstable, blurry tones into a more defined second movement anchored by piano and pianet.
“The high frequency tingling sound that builds the bridge between the two sections of this piece was the first thing I made. It was a loop made from some synths that I put through my pedalboard and pitched up a couple of octaves with a Whammy pedal. I liked how fragile and spikey it felt. The first half is mostly synths and guitar sounds, these all bend into one another and process in new ways, but as I got more confident in the piece and my production, I wanted to build something that felt really sonically recognizable in contrast to the kind of oblique first half, and I came up with the piano and pianet line that makes the second half.”
That production detail matters, because it frames Pearson’s solo debut as more than a side project. There’s a clear throughline from Squid’s interest in rhythm and abrasion, but here he replaces momentum with atmosphere and lets sound design carry the narrative. In a UK guitar scene where members of established bands often pivot to electronic work between cycles, Driving Through Belgium feels less like a detour and more like a formal expansion of Pearson’s role as a composer.
The six-track album includes Tintinnabulation I and a companion piece, suggesting a record structured around recurrence and variation rather than conventional songs.
Tracklist:
01 “Driving Past The Muscular Cows In Belgium”
02 “Builder In A Bottle”
03 “Tintinnabulation I”
04 “Teeth To Cut The Grass”
05 “Tintinnabulation II”
06 “Tern Daylight”
Driving Through Belgium arrives July 3 via World Of Echo.
