Initially known as being one-half of indie outfit Sunglasses for Jaws, the rising London-based producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Oscar “Sholto” Robertson grew up with with a deep and abiding love of jazz, soul, krautrock and soundtracks from the 60s and 70s. As a producer, Robertson honed his production skills under the guidance and tutelage of Allah-Las‘ Nick Waterhouse and Inflo.

A handful of years ago, Roberston stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with his recording project, SHOLTO. And with SHOLTO, the rising London-based multi-instrumentalist has firmly cemented a cinematic take on instrumental, psychedelic soul.

Robertson’s highly-anticipated sophomore SHOLTO album, The Sirens is slated for a November 21, 2025 release through DeepMatter Records. Recorded at the London-based composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist’s Hackney-based SJF Studio, the 12-song album sees Robertson continuing an ongoing collaboration with a familiar cast of musicians, who have helped flesh out the gorgeous, string section accentuated, groove-driven soundscapes he’s developed, including Syd Kemp (bass), Clementine Brown (strings) and Rachel Horton Kitchlew (harp).

The album will see Roberson and his collaborators crafting an album of material that’s emotionally unflinching and explores themes of duality, temptation and emotional dislocation, in Robertson’s words “blurring grief wit groove, seduction and surrender.” Sonically, the album’s material sees Robertson building upon the groove-driven, strings-soaked soundscapes and ethereal textures that has won him attention in the UK and elsewhere but inverting that beauty into a haunting fever dream.

Using the world of myth and the carnivalesque as a vehicle for exploring the intricacies of the human condition, The Sirens emerged from a period of uncertainty and spiritual fatigue. Drawing from ancient allegory to navigate through the inner turbulence he experienced, the album’s material is rooted in quiet defiance and tension that sometimes never quite resolves. While being deeply cinematic, the album’s material is anchored by Robertson’s rhythmic sensibility and dramatic vocal cues that drift in and out, evoking the ancient tale of the Sirens calling out to sailors while evoking dream sequences seemingly caught mid-thought. “The Sirens trades the ethereal shimmer of my earlier records with something a little more nuanced and emotionally unflinching, slightly darker. It doesn’t really resolve, just resonates – a love letter to the parts of ourselves we usually avoid.”

The Sirens‘ third and last pre-release single “Tied to the Mast” opens with a bursts of glitchy vocals being swallowed by breathtakingly gorgeous, twinkling strings before morphing into a swaggering, Motown/Daptone/Big Crown-like soul groove with an ethereal cacophony of vocals calling out from the swelling storm of sound. The song evokes a small boat out at sea that gets caught and pulled into — and then under — a swelling storm, before breaking apart and tossing its sailors into the sea.

“’Tied to the Mast’ is a stormy, myth-soaked odyssey. It opens with distant, glitchy siren-esque vocals – spectral and seductive, like ancient voices cutting through static,” Robertson says. “Then comes the drop – Odysseus lashed to the mast, as the storm climaxes the track unravels into a slow more haunting coda, melodies scattered like the wreckage. You’re left drifting and floating in the aftermath, unsure if you have survived or where always meant to crash.”