To anyone unfamiliar with London’s Windmill scene, The Orchestra (For Now) offers the perfect introduction. Named after The Windmill pub in Brixton, the scene offers a brand of art rock characterised by jagged urgency, regular stylistic spasms, and lyrics that read more like raw poetry than conventional songs. Black Country, New Road rode the sound to extraordinary acclaim with 2022’s Ants From Up There, and with all the plaudits The Orchestra (For Now) have received thus far, they look primed to replicate that success, and deservingly so.

What immediately impressed me was the band’s grasp of tension and dynamics. ‘Impatient’ opens with soft vocals and a flickering guitar, instantly catchy yet weirdly uneasy, and erupts with a walloping hook where every instrument feels on the verge of breaking through your headphones. Ironically, it’s a song that rewards patience. Likewise, ‘Hattrick’ careens across many instrumental shifts as the sly violin and cello snake their way through the liquid bass, before an extraordinary crescendo puts to rest any doubts you might have about the musical talent on display.

The diversity seems never-ending. The denser gallop of ‘Amsterdam’ feels almost upbeat before the cacophonous final passage erupts forth, the band pushing the limits of how far they can take their sound while maintaining their undeniable melodic integrity. Similar case on ‘The Administration’ where the quivering guitar and strings stand in stark contrast to the haunted fuzz that rumbles through it later, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t compelling.

By the closing track ‘Deplore You / Farmer’s Market’, yet another track with a slow build up, this time with a simmering keyboard, it’s hard to not be in awe of the band’s grandiose theatricality, and just how willing they are to run with it in whatever direction it might take them, and that bleeds into their lyricism too. The band’s poetry rides the line between the abstract and direct, weighty and bleak through how it hammers on death as its central theme. At its most accessible, the imagery of ghosts and last breaths being drawn lends the album an almost spiritual edge, but once you get to the accusation of murder on ‘Hattrick’, the burning alive on ‘Amsterdam’ or the sheer exhaustion of ‘The Administration’, the way the music constantly sounds like it’s swallowing itself whole makes a lot more sense. It all comes to a head on ‘Deplore You / Farmer’s Market’ where the fear of being remembered only for their failures becomes too much to bear, and one last mighty crescendo sees us off.

If you’re looking for easy music, steer well clear. Everyone else, the hype train has well and truly left the station. With a debut album looking set for 2026, I’d put money on The Orchestra (For Now) making it a hat-trick of great projects.

The Orchestra (For Now): Plan 76 – Released 31 October 2025

Orchestra (For Now) – Hattrick (Official Video)