Natalie Wildgoose has announced details of her forthcoming EP Rural Hours, a six-track collection shaped by landscape, memory and the quiet tensions of rural life.
Splitting her time between London and the moors of North Yorkshire, Wildgoose has increasingly allowed place to become an active collaborator in her work. Working alongside Chris Brain and Owen Spafford, she travelled across remote corners of North Yorkshire, recording in Victorian mills, Grade II listed village halls and isolated chapels. The architecture and atmosphere of these spaces inform the record’s sparse arrangements and sense of hushed reverence.
Out on 15th April 2026 via State51, Rural Hours explores both personal and communal histories. Wildgoose’s writing remains minimalist, but there is precision in the restraint. Acoustic textures, subtle folk inflections and open space create a cool, almost frostbitten clarity, placing the listener inside her shifting geography.
Lead track ‘Nobody On The Path’ introduces the EP’s emotional terrain. Built around delicate instrumentation and steady vocal phrasing, the song examines isolation without romanticising it. There is solitude here, but also recalibration. The psycho-geographical thread runs throughout, with rural identity framed not as nostalgia but as something lived, negotiated and sometimes contested.
Wildgoose will support the release with a headline show at Stoke Newington Old Church in London on 19th May 2026, a venue whose acoustic intimacy mirrors the EP’s aesthetic.
With Rural Hours, she continues to refine a songwriting voice that treats landscape as narrative, and stillness as substance.
1 Comment
This song is so beautiful. Frostbitten clarity is a lovely description.