Caoilfhionn Rose : Draw Out Your World

Caoilfhionn Rose’s completely immersive fourth full-length offering – her first for Lost Map – is a powerful statement about new motherhood, strength and resilience through change and the importance of collaboration, community and placing trust in others. A softly unravelling collection of songs grown from dreamy improvisations and driving, beat-led folktronica. ‘Draw Out Your World’ arrives in the wake of Caoilfhionn having scored a #1 on the UK Official Independent Albums Chart, as a key contributor to Mancunian post-punk cult heroes The Durutti Column’s critically-acclaimed 2026 release Renascent.

Raised in Manchester, Caoilfhionn developed a “deep, almost spiritual appreciation” of music in all its diversity from a young age. Drawing inspiration from nature, dreams, and personal experiences, she crafts songs that are both intimate and universal in their themes. Having experienced periods of serious illness, music has come to assume an even more profound role in her life – after episodes of catatonia and psychosis, familiar songs on her iPod “really reawakened me,” she recalls. “I have Bipolar Affective Disorder, and music has played a part in drawing me out of some patches of serious ill health.” Inspired to begin writing and performing as well as studying music, Caoilfhionn started playing open mic nights around Manchester around 2013, while simultaneously embarking on a collaboration with The Durutti Column, one of Factory Records’ most distinctive and prolific artists – an experience which, she says, “really helped open my mind and music world”. A performance at a local café caught the attention of Gondwana Records founder Matthew Halsall, who invited Caoilfhionn to work on her debut album 2018’s
Awaken. It became the first of three albums for the label; followed by 2021’s Truly and 2024’s Constellation. As a bandleader she headlined tours across the UK and Europe and has also supported artists such as Mammal Hands, The Breath, GoGo Penguin, Alabaster dePlume and Hania Rani. Scattered ideas for what would become Caoilfhionn Rose’s fourth album began accumulating long ago, in fits and starts and multiple iterations, with some tracks lying finished but unheard for years. Yet the record only truly began to take shape in the midst of a period of profound personal change. During a trip to Marrakesh, Morocco with her husband and long-time creative partner Rich Williams in January 2025, the pair spent evenings among the musicians and communities gathered beneath the night sky in Jemaa el-Fnaa. “The trip really reinvigorated us and led to lots of conversations about why we make music and why we love it,” she remembers. Several of Draw Out Your World’s newest songs were born during Caoilfhionn’s pregnancy with her first child.

Although a deeply joyful time, she experienced severe sickness throughout, making music difficult (her voice changed so much during pregnancy that some vocals had to be re-recorded after her daughter arrived). In moments when she felt well enough, Caoilfhionn and Rich began shaping new ideas and songs from loops and fragments he had been creating, later bringing musicians together to record and remodel the compositions live in the studio. A combination of impulse and patience, individual expression and collective improvisation lies at the heart of Draw Out Your World. Four tracks emerged during two days of spontaneous invention in Copenhagen with multi-awardwinning Danish electronic jazz duo Svaneborg Kardyb. Other, older pieces were patiently revisited and reworked with keyboardist John Ellis (a founding member of The Cinematic Orchestra). Caoilfhionn’s ongoing collaborations with The Durutti Column have long informed her carefree approach to making music (“lots of improvising and experimenting… seeing what sticks”); here she pushes it further than ever. “It’s been a lot about following my intuition and trusting in the process and musicians in the room,” she says. Started from a sweet little mini-hand-drum loop by Rich and finished with Awen Blandford’s swooping cello lines, lullaby-like opener ‘Reflecting The Light’ was inspired by Caoilfhionn’s pregnancy – “the feeling of my little girl growing inside me,” as she puts it, and the almost supernatural feeling of connection to another person it brings.

The much older ‘Grow’ – a song about how a person “keeps unfolding” through good times and bad – came close to appearing on Caoilfhionn’s previous record Constellation in 2024 before finding renewed meaning and purpose here, reinvigorated by John Ellis’s rolling Fender Rhodes. Set to finger-picked guitar and hazy electronics, the album’s title track ‘Draw Out Your World’ drifts into view like a gentle parting of the clouds – a mellow but vivid reflection on dreams and realities and the pathways in between, with shades of Judee Sill and Linda Perhacs. By sharp contrast, ‘Hidden Wars’ – a song about trying to get away from spiraling negative thoughts – is set to a fiercely snaking groove inspired by Caoilfhionn’s love of artists like Portishead and The Smile. The moodily languid and sparse ‘Just To Be Alive’ leans into Caoilfhionn’s more electronic side, Nikolaj from Svaneborg Kardyb conjuring pure atmosphere on his swirling Juno synth, before ‘To A Feeling’ collides into a wild, wonky and raw jazz jam rising to Eleanor Colee’s ripping saxophone solo. ‘As I Find Myself Again’ lands the album on a subtle ellipsis – its feeling of calm finality unsettled by the faintest flicker of a new melodic phrase at the end.