Sleep Unhealed, the solo project of Isle of Lewis-based multi-instrumentalist Matthew Newsome, brings a haunting and introspective blend of progressive folk and ambient music.

With a background in the UK DIY punk scene, Newsome’s new direction, marked by complex fingerstyle guitar, droning organs, and layered vocals, feels deeply personal and profound. His debut single, ‘Powder Blues,’ premieres exclusively with It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine and sets the tone for his forthcoming album, ‘Safe in the Hard Place’ (March 7, 2025, Isolation Strategies). The track captures the album’s themes of claustrophobic beauty, where folk tradition meets psychedelic and avant-garde influences.

Pre-order ‘Safe in the Hard Place’ via Isolation Strategies here ahead of its official release on 7th March 2025.

“I keep returning to an imagined dark, damp landscape—no buildings, twisted foliage, and a sense of folk-horror”

The Isle of Lewis is situated in an extremely remote part of the UK. Are you originally from Scotland and the Outer Hebrides, or did you relocate there to focus on your music?

I am English. And I did relocate with the idea of focusing on art and music. It’s not been the easiest move—the physical isolation is perfect, but the emotional side is much harder. It informs my work, and although a decent chunk of the LP was written before my move, the sonic landscape seems to fit well. The feeling of cloying dampness, being apart, and a vague occult menace have clearly been part of my thinking for a long time. Maybe Lewis is an embodiment of my creative feelings that I subconsciously sought out, though I couldn’t really say for sure.

Over the last year, I’ve turned my practice toward a more direct folk/singer-songwriter ideal—to have songs that can be performed in the usual custom of the pubs around town—but I’ve not been able to stop myself deconstructing these pieces. I can’t seem to exist within such a direct expression of my music. As much as I like the pieces, it feels awkward as fuck.

Your background isn’t strictly limited to experimental folk and ambient music. What can you tell us about your involvement in other forms/styles of music that may have led you to Sleep Unhealed?

My first love was indie in the Britpop era, which led to US art-rock, which led to hardcore, which will forever be my true love. I always had curiosity about art music and attended as much opera, modern classical, and improviser gigs as I did punk. I always felt like there was a space between the coldness of aleatoric and programmed art music and the emotional release of good pop. A piece being clever can be visceral but doesn’t really resonate with me in the longer term.

I feel more comfortable with acoustic guitar—uncompressed and able to hide in the subtleties of touch and response, compared to the way electric guitar can be strident and penetrating. Having to actually play an instrument is such a block to my creativity, and at its best, it still slows down the recording process to a crawl. I’d like to go fully electronic, but that’s a whole other thing.

I suppose the DIY punk/art perspective—the criticality of Doing Your Own Music—is the reason why I’m dragging myself through the long and challenging recording and release process. Making it sound like it’s meant to sound (wherever that feeling lives in my brain) is my main drive.

Everything about ‘Safe in the Hard Place’ feels deeply personal and reflective. Is it scarier releasing an album that’s so introspective and personal compared to something that perhaps forgoes such complex emotions?

Yeah. As I mentioned, the idea was always to try and be as uncompromising as possible while maintaining it in a Rock ‘n’ Pop tradition. It would be easier to make music that already existed within a genre framework as opposed to jumping directly into the worst of all worlds. Looking back, I honestly don’t know where it came from, and in my worst moments of writer’s block, I’m not sure it was even me that made the LP. I’ve always struggled with writing lyrics and come from a music-first way of working—the lyrics come as sounds and phrases and are allowed to form in whatever way seems honest. I’m quite cheery in real life. Maybe the music is a way to explore these other places. Whether these are more or less real than my outward life is something I’ve thought about a lot.

What kind of atmosphere do you hope listeners experience when they dive into your music?

I hope listeners feel something that echoes what the landscapes of the Outer Hebrides feel like to me. There’s this vast, empty beauty and quiet that sits with an undercurrent of darkness and claustrophobia. I keep returning to an imagined dark, damp landscape—no buildings, twisted foliage, and a sense of folk-horror, but also where the dark is warm and welcoming and draws me in, barefoot, disappearing. The album is a story, but I’m not sure if it has any kind of conclusion. Maybe a sense of acceptance of it all by the end. I wanted the piano ballad to cap off the record from early on. I wanted it to feel cold and empty. The piano references the introduction, which I thought might be a little on the nose, but sometimes I need to get out of my own way.

“Happy accidents, chaos, and technology underpin the LP.”

How would you define your style of guitar playing, and what guitarists have directly influenced you and the music on ‘Safe in the Hard Place’?

My playing is grounded in folk revival and American primitivist players. Seeing players such as Sir Richard Bishop and Glenn Jones when I was young, taking these established historic art forms to new places, was inspiring. I think the drones plus acoustic were a straight theft from Mount Eerie, though I now question my memory of that. I use a lot of editing in my writing. I might take a simple riff and use tab software or a DAW to mix the elements, shift certain notes in pitch or duration, take entire lines into different keys, and play around until it feels correct. It’s certainly not an organic process—the music doesn’t flow from my soul. The joke is I can’t play a lot of my own songs, and the recordings are stitched together from various takes. Sometimes the “wrong” takes are forced together to form a counterpoint. I can’t write these things in my head. Happy accidents, chaos, and technology underpin the LP.

Do you consider yourself a connoisseur of genres like folk, psychedelia, progressive rock, and experimental music? If so, are there any specific artists or bands you’d recommend to people hearing Sleep Unhealed for the very first time?

I don’t consider myself a connoisseur—more a dilettante stealing sounds as needed. I wanted the record to sound like a rock record—not to be too esoteric. My knowledge is very much surface level, which gives me a real sense of shame when I talk to deep music fans. So, I struggle to get specific. When it comes to leaning into the idea of this being a catchy LP, I think of a lot of the ’80s work by King Crimson or David Sylvian—using earnest belief in the sound to avoid sounding cheesy or half-arsed. Same with Scott Walker—going unnecessarily hard when he could have coasted on his legacy. I take heavier elements from Neurosis or Swans, guitar lines from Richard Thompson or John Martyn, and production ideas from Earl Sweatshirt or mainstream pop. Dizzy swirling from Dead Meadow or Yo La Tengo. I think it’s how these elements are arranged that creates a personal vibe throughout the LP. I didn’t do this in isolation (beyond my own literal version), and I don’t have any issue admitting that.

What can you tell us about your new single, ‘Powder Blues’?

This song is the one most grounded in traditional folk songwriting, so I think it makes a good introduction to my work. I think I was exploring ideas around ‘The Scarecrow’ by the Watersons, and it mutated from there. I wanted the two guitars playing together, twisting around each other, and they both ended up in some weird tuning just to make the fingering work. (I refer to my computer editing process—sometimes the edited lines can’t physically be played, and I have to rework them in new tunings.) When an emergent counterpoint shifts the entire mood of a section into something that sounds sophisticated but with emotional heart, it’s a good thing for me.

This song explores themes of loss, desperation, and hopelessness—or rather, the hope that if you just keep your foot on the accelerator, nothing will catch you. The problem is that it becomes self-fulfilling, and one loses the ability to ever stop.

<a href="https://sleepunhealed.bandcamp.com/track/powder-blues-2">Powder Blues by Sleep Unhealed</a>

What are your plans for Sleep Unhealed in 2025? Do you see yourself touring this record or performing it in a live setting? If you do, how difficult is it for a musician to play live while residing in such a remote part of the world?

I don’t see myself touring this record anytime soon, as the nature of this album (lots of layering) means it would be hard to play live. But I have ideas marinating in the back of my skull—using the pieces and fragments therein as the foundations for almost a live remixing. But as your second question suggests, it’s all a moot point, and being at the mercy of Calmac to get me to concerts on the mainland means playing live is not a priority.

Otherwise, it’s writing and recording and trying to make everything better—building on the ideas on SITHP and continuing to try to mine the gap between overly fussy art music and overly earnest songwriter shit. We’ll see. I find the process torturous, but the brief glimmers of correctness among days and weeks of experimenting almost make it worth it.

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