For the last few years Memnon Sa has been Misha Hering’s outlet for exploring the depths of his imagination. Using his London HQ, the now legendary Holy Mountain Studios (Spiritualized, Idles, 40 Watt Sun) as his own personal laboratory, he has released three sprawling albums: Citadel (2014), Lemurian Dawn (2018) and most recently the acclaimed World Serpent (2020). For his fourth album, and first on Shadow World, Hering’s efforts have been fully galvanized by the world he now finds himself living in. Initially forged in the deep-seated context of teenage hip-hop fandom, but now immersed in the explorative sonic worlds of new age, jazz, kosmiche and doom metal, Memnon Sa stands alongside his contemporaries Virginia Wing, Xam Duo and Duffin as the deeply esoteric and cerebral member of this group of long-standing friends and collaborators.

Like so much creative, social and industrial output post-2021 the world over, Offworld Radiation Therapy has been significantly coloured by Misha’s experiences during the global pandemic. Retreating from the UK on the last plane back to his home of Geneva, Switzerland in 2020 to care for his parents for what he initially thought would only be a month or two, Misha ended up staying and settling, trading Hackney’s hustle and bustle for the stark contrast of the Swiss alps’ rural peace and tranquility. ORT is the story of that mental and emotional journey, charting the personal and shared trauma that we are all still processing, and how this was guided by the dystopian “leadership” of international politicians. Through the peaks and troughs of hope, mourning, corruption and lies, not to mention the illness itself, this was a late-20th century sci-fi film played out in real time.