There’s wonderful news from Pennsylvania-based visual artist and musician Brandon Locher, who has announced not one but two new releases: Rahu Ketu, his first full-length album under his own name, and preceding it a companion EP titled The Shadow Planets.
Locher is no stranger to us. Ever since the release of The Meets’ It Happens Outside, which was one of our Album Picks of 2013, we have kept a close eye on his ever-evolving output, from Stage Hands to his first solo recordings. Six years after his last release, The Shadow Planets and Rahu Ketu mark a long-awaited and welcome return.
Recorded during a self-imposed 264-day creative cycle, Rahu Ketu and The Shadow Planets see Locher continuing to refine his rich blend of ambient composition, library music, trip-hop and experimental sound collage. Entirely written, performed and produced by Locher, the music is informed by his Transcendental Meditation practice, resulting in immersive and rhythmic compositions guided as much by intuition as meticulous craftsmanship. The conceptual framework is as intriguing as the music itself, drawing on Vedic astrology. “What fascinated me about Vedic astrology wasn’t prediction so much as the idea of time and cycles,” he explains. “So when I looked at my own birth chart, I realized that the next period I was entering was Rahu Ketu, a 264-day cycle from September 2025 through May 2026.” Locher also created a symbolic tracklisting that deliberately omits the letters spelling Rahu Ketu from the album, with the companion EP including them and completing the alphabet.
We’ll be eagerly counting down the days until the release of The Shadow Planets on July 24th, before Rahu Ketu follows on October 2nd. Ahead of both releases, Locher has let loose ‘I’ from Rahu Ketu and ‘H-T’ from The Shadow Planets, serving as an exhilarating taste of what he’ll be throwing at us. Listen to both tracks below.
