Biography
(Supporting Panda Bear & Sonic Boom in Coventry, click here for Fighting Boredom review, 23/04/23 - Photo by Robert Barrett)
Stone Anthem is the alias of UK based multi-instrumentalist artist Archie Ingram. The project took shape in 2019, when he was aged 12, and began self-releasing music the same year. Since then, the project blossomed into a world full of colours, experimental, heavily psychedelic textures and layers. The initial idea for the first two records ‘Between The Bliss’, created when Archie was 14, and released 16, and ‘Where Trees Go To Die’ (which has received high praise from Electronic Sound magazine). Both released via Castles in Space, the aim was to replicate the action of creating oil paintings through the medium of sound, inspired from picture-less cinema, being brought up in heavily artistic households, an enthusiasm for analog experimental and DIY recording practices - the result were two dense, varying and mystical realms, littered with shimmering synths and obscure, makeshift recording techniques combining cassette splicing, sound manipulation and conceptual sculpting.
The future of Stone Anthem lies in exploration of elements depicting heavy psychedelic walls of noise, dream pop, delicate ballads, trippy experimental pop and ambient-gaze soundscapes, bending and moulding genre conventions into something fresh. The point is to subvert genre expectations, to redefine what it is to label music. Stone Anthem has received guidance support, and mentorship and oppurtunities from artists such as Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3 / Spectrum / Experimental Audio Research), Saul Adamczewski (Insecure Men / Fat White Family etc), Three Quarter Skies (Simon Scott of Slowdive), whom he has performed live with. He continues to combine genres, movements and shapes in sound.
(Press shot, performing live at Levitation Festival, at the Capstone Theatre, Liverpool 01/11/2025 - Photo by Alan Smith)
A quote from Stone Anthem discussing his music: "My work kind of lives somewhere between a glitch and memory fragments of detuned voices field recordings processed until they feel fictional rhythms that almost repeat but never quite land the same way twice...Imagine music that feels like it’s remembering itself incorrectly. Melodies folding in on themselves, textures that dissolve as you focus on them, silence used like an instrument rather than an absence. It’s not ambient, not electronic, not experimental in the traditional sense, it’s closer to an ecosystem than a genre. Each piece is less a track and more a living system, unpredictable and fragile and slightly haunted like tuning into a broadcast from somewhere that doesn’t technically exist."
Archie Ingram hasn't just primarily released records, his sound work lies in many varying fields. In 2024, Ingram was commissioned by the Herbert Art Gallery in Coventry to curate an installation of immersive sound design to accompany a series of photographs of flora and fauna by British artist / filmmaker TL Walker. In the words of TL Walker: "The pieces I have produced take inspiration from the botanical studies of Angela Brazil in considering the idea of 'study' as productive method, and the role the study plays in the history of both artistic and scientific development. The collection of works explore different ways of studying and interpreting flowers by considering their position in a variety of systems, and as a system in their own right." The exhibition featured several screens around the rooms, and surround projection animations that they worked on, and 'surround-sound' sound art from Stone Anthem in response to these photographs. The immersive space was also a response to how sound as a concept interacts and can interfere with space and the natural world.
Stone Anthem also occasionally publishes written works. From poetry, to articles and literary essays. You can find these on Substack.
Others have said...
“It’s genuinely uplifting stuff, even when the arrival of baleful strings and a looped, honking horn signals danger lurking on the thermals” - Bob Fischer, Electronic Sound Magazine (Where Trees Go To Die article and review)
“It’s hard not to make a big deal of Ingram’s youth. Aged just 16 when he released his accomplished 2023 debut album ‘Between The Bliss’ and still only 17 when he made this stirring follow-up, he had already taken his place among the grizzled veterans of the live modular circuit.” - Bob Fischer, Electronic Sound Magazine (Where Trees Go To Die article and review)
"Stone Anthem. Someone rare in these times. Something interesting & someone interested [...] A commitment to the committed." - Sonic Boom
"A dense, slow-unfolding journey through organic textures, dissonant beauty, and meditative drones." - Rough Trade
