Double Exposure is not necessarily a fresh start, but this album contains some of the rawest and most deconstructed sounds that James Hoare – of Veronica Falls, Ultimate Painting and The Proper Ornaments – has recorded to date. For the first time, the guitars take a back seat. This is by no means a “guitarless” concept album; it is simply the end result. It would also be inaccurate to suggest that the guitars have been completely banished, especially after the double six-string solo on the album’s powerful opening track, Regrets. It’s not necessarily Skynyrd, but it is undoubtedly a goosebump-inducing experience. Following the first album Backwater Collage released in 2024 under the Penny Arcade pseudonym, here is a hallucinogenic experience whose backbone is the drum machine that inspired the songs. It is also an album marked by a gentle duality. The album features a few guests, but it is essentially a solo album of experimentation, whose compositions burst through the stereo before fading away again. Nothing is overthought; it is an album of ideas. Like most of the tracks on the album, it was recorded almost instantly, with a simplicity and authenticity that heavy overdubs and meticulous arrangements could never achieve. It is an album that radiates strong energy. ‘Double Exposure’ is a collection of no-frills songs. Double Exposure, which takes its name from the photographic technique, is made up of layers of ideas that were not written as tracks, but rather as spontaneous melodies that form their own abstract image. The album sits somewhere between the relentless experiments of Syd Barrett and the unabashed analog innovations of Tim Presley under the name White Fence.