NITE HIVE PRESENTS
AGNES HAUS - LISTEN TO A NEW TRACK, FAUST
AHEAD OF THE RELEASE OF INEXORABLE ASCENT
OUT 5 DECEMBER 2025
“Agnes Haus pre-empts their forthcoming release for Penelope Trappes’ Nite Hive label with isolated pulses filled with an intense and enveloping resonance, while increasing levels of distortion give off an air of danger.” – Electronic Sound live review
[Agnes Haus, credit Penelope Trappes]
Agnes Haus has shared a new piece from their forthcoming album, Inexorable Ascent, the fifth release on Penelope Trappes’ imprint, Nite Hive – out 5 December 2025.
Nite Hive has announced details of the fifth release on the label: non-binary audio-visual artist and composer, Agnes Haus’ Inexorable Ascent, out on 7 November 2025.
The new album by Brighton-based non-binary audio-visual artist and composer, Agnes Haus is a collection of slow harmonic drone-based modular synthesiser pieces composed entirely within the early hours between 12 and 4am. The album is a hallucinatory polyphonic study of external perceptions of what it means to live in a perpetual liminal state.
Listen to ‘Faust’ HERE
Inexorable Ascent was created during a period of solitude in late 2024, Agnes Haus set an intention to make a monochromatic electronic album that felt timeless and cinematic, yet uncomfortable. “Every night, for two weeks in my attic studio, I watched granular Bergman and Tarkovsky films in the background while I crudely experimented on my small modular synthesiser. I had been feeling like a pariah at the time by shunning binary systems on all levels, from politics to everyday life, which had become suffocating in the online world. I kind of anaesthetised myself in the late-night hours, focusing on the subtleties of the quiet particulars of sound - the details of the infinite intonations in between.”
The new track follows the release of Persona. The video, directed by Agnes Haus, whose video work includes collaborations with Mogwai, Penelope Trappes and Microcorps, is, Haus explains, “… part of a 9-piece series - 7 of which will never exist - with a clear nod to Andrei Tarkovsky. The video, shot on Hi-8 videotape, revolves around my character being surveilled, in various states of distress, mirroring the awkward ways humans navigate self-imposed detachment and the pressure of social interaction. Akin to how bizarre dreams enable one to work out their issues in unknown ways, it’s essentially a public performance art piece about voyeurism and insecurity - a constant work in progress.”
Agnes Haus’s Inexorable Ascent is out on cassette and digitally via Nite Hive on 5 December 2025 - Pre-order HERE
INEXORABLE ASCENT tracklisting (Nite Hive 005)
1. Afterglow
2. Polyphyletic
3. Sacrifice
4. Permadrag
4. Persona
6. Temporal
7. Conversion
8. Torment
9. Faust
Connect with Agnes Haus – official website / Bandcamp / Instagram
RECENT PRAISE FOR AGNES HAUS
“…cinematically beautiful and bleak... Introverted and intense.” The Wire
“… spiralling synth tendrils take flight amidst a cloud of celestial drones.” - First Floor
“ There’s a bleakness infused through the whole cassette… This sense of glassy-eyed sinisterism births a feeling that there’s an extra presence over your shoulder as something darker permeates the room. ‘Sequel’ sits in a tainted gothic electronic void.” - Foxy Digitalis
EDITORS NOTES
Agnes Haus is a non-binary Brighton-based audio-visual artist and composer creating murky, fractured aural landscapes revolving around semi-autonomous explorations made entirely with modular synthesisers. In 2023 and 2024, respectively, their first two albums, "Sequel' and ‘Everything Is Resurrection’ were released on the iconic cassette label Opal Tapes - praised for their bleak minimalism and organic spaciousness. Their live performances are akin to a live score; fully improvisational, purposefully hypnotic, with haunting self-created cinematics. Along with audio, Agnes Haus is arguably best known for their visual work, exploring the dark and the surreal through music videos for artists such as Mogwai and Penelope Trappes. They have shown their visual work at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Attenborough Centre for the Arts, EarTH, Dark MOFO Festival, Sonica Festival and SXSW.
Nite Hive Records is Penelope Trappes’ imprint, designed as a label run by - and for - women and gender expansive artists to allow the free exploration of their approach to experimental music. Nite Hive aims to expand the template by welcoming audio work from the edges of sound, art and beyond - creating without restriction nor question to shift paradigms within the music industry. All of these will be released digitally and on limited-edition cassette tape. She goes on to announce, “I’m thrilled that the first five releases are by artists whose work I deeply admire.”
Penelope Trappes - Heavenly Spheres (NiteHive001)
"...a striking work of evolution and deconstruction" - The Wire
“Penelope Trappes has created a stunning album of music and sound art… the sound of dust motes momentarily caught in a shaft of moonlight, of spirits pushing through from another realm. Alluring yet unsettling.” - Electronic Sound
“...the album is starkly intimate and surreal—like watching yourself mourn intense tragedy from an outsider’s vantage point.” - Bandcamp Album of the Day
“...the album is starkly intimate and surreal—like watching yourself mourn intense tragedy from an outsider’s vantage point.” - Bandcamp Album of the Day
Karen Vogt - Waterlog (NiteHive002)
“… a cathartic collection” – Electronic Sound
“… a dreamlike lament that sounds like it was recorded amid church ruins during a dark night of the soul” – Uncut
“Layers of wordless, echoey vocal loops, with hints of modal melody” – NY Times
Patricia Wolf The Secret Lives Of Birds (NiteHive003)
“It’s like being in a hide: hushed, intimate and ultimately oddly moving” - MOJO
“Wolf pairs chilly emotional heft with earthiness and warmth to strike a much-needed balance.” - The Wire
“Wolf remains the primary protagonist on the record, weaving bits of birdsong into her ambient mediations and tastefully cinematic soundscapes” - First Floor
Pefkin - The Rescoring (NiteHive004)
“Pefkin… is a dab hand at overlaying everyday emotion with magical resonance.” - Electronic Sound
“a hauntingly beautiful piece of work” - Moodbuilding
“…a record that doesn’t just document transition but enacts it, lingering in the fertile instability between past and future.” - The Predatory Wasp
Connect with Agnes Haus – official website / Bandcamp / Instagram
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