beltane quarterly roundup ✦ spring 2026

01 May, 2026

this quarterly update covers January, February, March and April of this year! (and a tiny bit of last year bc I’ve just been that delayed with updates)

the preamble about starting a blog in a first place

this is my first blog post! I might go back to this post to rewrite and add some more visual bits and bats but I wanted to have this out there for beltane. happy beltane, all!

with social media crumbling and vibecoding all over the place right now, I wanted to get something going with an RSS feed where I can post about my happenings all in one go, without the pressure of posting smaller and frequently in other places.

not only there's that pressure of frequency, but also I've generally become more reserved over the things I wanted to share in my life on the go. I've withdrawn from being online loads compared to before the pandemic started, which in some ways has been great, but in other ways, it's been a part of the personal (likely autistic-related) burnout I've been going through since then. A lot of it was probably coming down to masking in the autistic sense of things, and wariness around being perceived beyond my work and what I do.

It's something I still experience a lot, and it's a tricky thing to balance when having to be perceived is a given when it comes to my work, especially with a busy year ahead. But I've been learning more about where my limits are and where I can get my energy together so I can start dipping my toes back into sharing more about what I do, my work, who I am to some extent, and it's probably going to be much easier to track this in a more permanent, long form space than other socials. it would've been something I'd done more with my cohost if it kept going (RIP to one of the best lil websites), but I think somewhere more like this where people have the option to follow along or not feels right.

so here's to hopefully less posts about crawling out of the molehill I live in and to throwing something out here more bit by bit. I'll be updating my about page at some point soon about the type of things I hope to write more about, and I still don't know what this space will mostly consist of yet, but I'm always open to reading some suggestions in the comments!

okay I will now start the quarterly roundup

Before this year, I contributed to Video Game Chronicle's Best VGM of 2025, where I wrote a bit about Paula Ruiz aka Fingerspit's OST for Many Nights a Whisper. She's been behind a few of my favourite soundtracks over the last few years and I want to use the chance to platform the record on the article where possible. You can read about what I wrote and the other entries here:

hey isn't today bandcamp friday by the way?

brego, my child,

In January I adopted Brego, who's 2/3 years old, an extremely affectionate chirper and yeller and little shadow who tries his best to be a sweet little studio assistant. Adopting a cat has been a long time coming where I wanted to be in a secure enough position to have a companion like him around in my life, and he appeared at more or less the best time, right as I was coming out of the woods of a pretty steady depression over the autumn and winter period of last year.

[captions: brego is loafing on a little bread toy. and brego is lying and sleeping on his cat tree in front of some guitar pedals. brego is a black cat with a small white stripe on his chest.]

He's weirdly been a very effective body double where he'd sleep on his little bed desk while I work - not a permanent solution for (what I hope I'd eventually diagnose) ADHD-related task paralysis and executive dysfunctioning but a helpful momentum towards getting a routine again. So I'm real grateful to have him here with me now. Hopefully y'all will see more of him here eventually!

surf club + loneliness & laundry + games to be announced

Since the beginning of this year, I've been focusing on the game Surf Club, which I've been working on on-and-off with Dinko as far back as 2020! The sort of music I've been doing is inspired by surf music, digital fusion, city pop, and more between the lines of those, and it's been a sweet time to have some intentional time to work on a game with these lighter tones!

Olivia, our lead developer, has been vlogging through some of the development process, and you'll get to see a lot of how the game is shaping up here. skip to 23:24 for an exclusive (for now) preview of one of the most recent tracks I've produced for the game!


I have been working on a couple of other games too, mostly over certain periods of time where I can focus on each project (becoming more monotropic in my focus coming out of burnout is an interesting one, I might write more about this), but these will be my next bigger projects and soundtracks following Surf Club's release eventually, and I'm looking forward to sharing more around those, which I hope to do when we announce things next month! basically stay turned around the beginning of June, i'll write about 'em too



Also, the animated short film I worked on, Loneliness & Laundry, is finally live! You can now watch the film and hear my score in the context of everything that's happening. I usually launch the soundtrack alongside projects being live like this, but the animators were keen to have the OST available sooner. So hey, go watch the film,
and if you've enjoyed that, consider grabbing a copy of the soundtrack!

draknek + subvert

I chatted to Alan and Syrenne from Draknek on their podcast back in February! You can probably tell how little of a public speaker I am here, haha, but it's mostly a little chat around where I creatively got into making music for games, but we also talked shop around working on A Monster's Expedition. I dug out my old game development notes from this which I was really glad to reminisce about even if we didn't talk about everything! have a listen below

also, I'm always on the lookout for different music platforms outside of bandcamp and the streaming sites, and have recently joined onto Subvert, a co-op where the platform is owned by the people who use it, artists and users!

I really appreciate getting to know more about their values and looking forward to where things go with their platform. I especially want to shout out their AI policy, where it makes a distinction between generative AI (it's prohibited, as it should) and machine learning, which you usually see in most music production tools.

what do you think about subvert? i'm curious to know of others thoughts around it! if subvert is something that would interest you then my page is below:

do I still go to games events?

sometimes but for the most part, not really. Maybe that's a general feeling for after the lockdowns, but I'm probably more likely to pick and choose where I'd go over going to every single thing, especially as someone who doesn't live in a city as big as London or Birmingham, or as someone who tries to conserve their energy socially where possible. usually something small or on the fringe of a bigger game event where possible.

you can usually catch me at Yorkshire Game Festival or Game Audio Symposium (GAS). the former I didn't go to this year but this month I'll be going to the latter! it's a game audio-specific conference, but what's been good about these folks is their encouragement towards making the space more accessible by having an Access Fund for underrepresented people in game audio.

I always think there can be more done to see more folks in the space who look less like the usual game audio crowds, but it's getting better bit by bit, to the point where me and my friend Ashley Wills talked about running a small meetup within the event for LGBTQ+ folks in the future. which is what I'm hoping to doing this year!

I'll be announcing more details on Bluesky/Instagram nearer to the time, but I'm going to see how I get on with setting up a LGBTQ+ meetup for GAS attendees around lunchtime on the Saturday.

as for other game events this year, that's still TBD for reasons earlier said, but I'll mention about any coming up that I'm confirming going to on my bluesky.

okay that's it for now

hopefully I'll get into the habit of writing a bit more, energy depending, so I can't guarantee how often I update this (I was already bad enough with my attempt at getting a mailing list together, which was only the once, but maybe I can work on combining this with that. we'll see)! But again, any suggestions of things to write and talk about would be sweet. in the meantime i'm looking forward to sharing more again soon.