Most ambient records treat the dark as a problem to fix, a place to escape with a slow swell of light. Darkness Is Just Darkness, the new album from Scottish composer Euan Alexander Millar-McMeeken and Swedish cellist Henrik Meierkord, takes the opposite view. Its own notes describe darkness as a neutral state, something to sit with and watch rather than climb out of. "All One Breath" is a good place to start.
The album came out on September 22, 2026 on Audiobulb Records (catalog number AB180). It is not a single ahead of a later album: "All One Breath" is track two of nine, it runs 6 minutes 24 seconds, and the whole record, about 53 minutes long, is out now as a digital release on Bandcamp, Apple Music and Spotify.
How the record is built
According to Audiobulb, the music was written and put together by Millar-McMeeken. Synths, drones and small harmonic shifts make a thin frame, and Meierkord's cello moves through it, sometimes holding long tones, sometimes scraping, sometimes playing short, mournful phrases. Spoken passages run through the record in a plain, everyday voice, and the label says the words are meant to sit inside the music as one more texture, not on top of it as a lead vocal. The aim, in the label's framing, is reflection rather than confession: nothing decorative, nothing resolved for you.
"All One Breath" follows the opener, "The Evening Seems So Distant," and the rest of the track list reads like one long night: "Shades Of Night," "Where Morning Broke," "Are You Restless," "Silence In The Dark," "An Hour Before Dawn," "Memory" and "A Little Part Of This In Everyone." For "Silence In The Dark," Lebanese visual artist Ralph Moussa made a video built around melting ice, which Audiobulb posted to its channel.
A second meeting, a different room
This is not the pair's first record. In March 2026, Whitelabrecs released We Gape and We Are Healed, credited to Glacis with Henrik Meierkord. That one was just piano and cello, improvised with no fixed concept. Darkness Is Just Darkness keeps the cello, builds around synths and drones instead and adds spoken word, so it lands as a close relative rather than a sequel.
Who they are
Millar-McMeeken grew up in Dundee and now lives on the south coast of England. His official bios say he started recording as Glacis in 2010, after his band Kays Lavelle split and left him alone with a piano. Since then he has worked in a string of duos, including Gallowglas, Civic Hall with Craig Tattersall and The Dead Bell with The Green Kingdom. Under his own name he released Framed Insects on Sleep In The Fire earlier this year, a record built from unstable loops and degraded samples.
Meierkord comes from Helsingborg and works out of Stockholm. His official site says the cello is his main instrument, with viola, double bass and guitar alongside it. He picked up the cello at 12, played in classical orchestras and bands, and has released music on labels including Projekt Records, Dronarivm and Whitelabrecs. He is remarkably prolific: his Bandcamp lists close to 100 releases, the newest being Naken, four solo improvisations out October 7, three of them played on a cello made in the Vogtland region in 1880.
How to hear it and buy it
Bandcamp lists no vinyl or CD edition. The best way to support it is to buy direct: the digital album is on Bandcamp, with 24-bit downloads, and "All One Breath" is available on its own too. More from the label is on Audiobulb's Bandcamp.
Give it headphones and a dark room. If you need a pair, our studio headphones guide has picks at every price. New to this corner of music? Our ambient music starter guide covers the records that built it, and if Millar-McMeeken's habit of working with recorded environments makes you want to capture your own, see our field recorders for musicians.
Darkness Is Just Darkness on Audiobulb · Bandcamp · All One Breath on Apple Music · Henrik Meierkord
