Celebrating 10 years as a recording project, HELLO COSMOS, burst back into being with a flurry of activity in 2025.
As well as sporting a new-look line up, the intergalactic post-punk collective return with a long-awaited second studio album (plus the tantalising promise of more to come), and have already had a busy summer of live shows at established festivals around the UK.
But let’s take a step back to remind ourselves of their journey to date…
Based in Greater Manchester, Hello Cosmos established itself a decade ago as a collective of creatives with an ever revolving line-up of contributors. Led by songwriter and bass player Ben Robinson, the co-founder of the celebrated bluedot & Kendal Calling festivals, mainstay members across their decade to date also include his drumming powerhouse brother Simon Robinson, plus the inimitable Angela Chan on viola/synths/vocals - notably a member of the Mercury-shortlisted Lanterns on the Lake and a touring member of Placebo.
Making an impact with early singles and EP’s like “Raise The Dawn” (2018) and “Run For President” (2019), the latter would prove to be a watershed moment for the band, earning supporters at established media titles like Under The Radar and Louder Than War, plus airplay across BBC Radio 1, BBC 6 Music and Radio X.
A series of subsequent singles from there, including “Fuse”, “Let Love Be The Island Upon Which We Stand”, and “Renegade Love”, would all chart the way to Hello Cosmos’ seismic debut album ‘Dream Harder’ in 2021. A breath of fresh air amidst those PPE smothered years, ‘Dream Harder’ decisively blasted away the gloom with its hybrid of obliterating electro-punk and incisive lyricism. Featuring the unique guitar tones of Deathretro’s Adrian Ingham, the album also featured over 20 collaborators across its 11 songs, with notable contributions coming from James Smith (Yard Act), Ila (Tallsaint, Loux), Emma Banks (Galaxians), Emily Ingham (Mi Mye), plus members of The Pleasure Temple Ritual Band, Slamboree, Lost Colours and many more. Receiving rave reviews from press, Louder Than War praised it as a record “guaranteed to knock your socks off” (4.5/5).
Continuing this creative streak, in the latter half of 2021, Robinson teamed-up with US-based producer The Olchemist to release the suitably out-there collaborative mixtape ‘Golden Dirt’. Pulling something of a handbrake turn on the full throttle psych/punk sound of their debut the Mixtape unearthed a aries of genre rabbit holes for the band to explore. The mixtape dropped into number 16 in Louder than War’s albums of the year, described by God is in the TV - ‘as funky as it is ear shatteringly loud.’
The studio release was also partnered with a thumping remix album, 2023’s ‘Hard Dirt Remixed’, featuring reworkings by Jagz Kooner (Sabres of Paradise, Oasis), Richard Norris (Beyond the Wizards Sleeve, The Grid), Catu Diosis (Ugandan producer), Jinku (East African Wave) & others was also released in tandem with the record.
While it may seem like aeons that the band have been away since then, behind the scenes Hello Cosmos have been fervently building their own studio, creative space & label from their current base in the Welkin Mill in Stockport: Cosmic Glue. Providing a kind of weightlessness from the gravity the wider music industry can hold independent artists down with, the Cosmic Glue label and studio set-up has enabled the collective, and many other contemporary artists, to be the masters of their own destinies in so many senses.
Building a community of friends and emerging acts to share knowledge and self-release records, the Cosmic Glue label has already released records from indie risers like Revivalry, Vacant Weekend, Diekaidie, Seven Seals, Deathretro, plus the second LP from Sea Fever (the five-piece that includes members of New Order). With an innovative studio space that has deliberately dismantled the figurative wall between live space and mixing room, the Cosmic Glue studio set-up has also hosted sessions, both live and recording, for Holly Head, Sinead Una, Sweet Gene, Gabriel Chanin, Robyn Mcleod, Vincent’s Last summer, Dantzik, Will Edgar, Fondabath, ASBESTOS, Evieanna Mullane, Kaiju, Olivia Diafaria, and The north star.
A labour of love, personally funded by Hello Cosmos frontman Ben Robinson, of the freedom Cosmic Glue has afforded him, and the other bands within the label/studio’s orbit, he says:
“Cosmic Glue started as a way for me to release my own music, to be free to explore my own sounds and art. I’ve done ok out of music and have resources, knowledge and connections so I’ve developed Cosmic Glue into a vehicle for me to channel those opportunities for original artists. Some younger and emerging that need some guidance and some more mature artists who need help to navigate proper adulting and still make and release music in a primarily unfamiliar digital world.
I’m a Cumbrian, I grew up in villages where there was no links to the music community so the label has a focus on extending the ladder down to people and places without the opportunities of city based music scenes. But it’s entirely open and inclusive so we are connecting with artists and like minded souls as far as Uganda, Seattle & Cleethorpes. We’re building a music community, not another silo of the music industry.”
And now Hello Cosmos listeners are about to reap the benefits of this growing community too, with the release of their very own upcoming album ‘Come Out Tonight’, due to arrive on the Cosmic Glue label this Autumn.
Hello Cosmos’ ambitious sophomore album features a long list of collaborators, and takes influence from all corners of the globe, with studio recording sessions having taken place in New York City, Los Angeles, Kampala, Leeds, Manchester, and of course at the Welkin Mill in Stockport.
Hello Cosmos’ first studio album proper in five long years, the songs of ‘Come Out Tonight’ are united by recurrent messages of both urgency and hope, as the world we live in spirals beyond recognition. A record that rallies to reclaim love from the clasps of the corporate advertising machine, and idle mindspace from the deathly doomscroll of toxic digital spaces; these eight unconventional, electrifying, amorphous tracks are intended to invoke visceral feelings of real humanity, communal connection, and the unlimited possibilities of unprogrammed passion.
Of the upcoming record, frontman Ben Robinson explains:
“A lot of the upcoming record is about finding the strength to switch off digital screens and go out and live. It’s becoming more and more normal to stay in, comatosed by ultraprocessed food and algorithms firing shallow dopamine hits, keeping us all hooked on a short wavelength, gradually becoming dumber, hopeless and unhealthy… We all need to wake each other up, get off the cool aid of digital apps, social media and algorithmic scrolling.”
The strident “JOY IS THE WAY” sets their latest campaign with a bonafide post-rock time-bomb. From the disparate and grungy distortion that laces its opening bars, Robinson goads the song into a thunderous ascension at a marching pace, his teasing cat-calls of “HELLO… HELLO…” cutting through the noise like a wake-up call to the comatose masses.
Lead single “Grind Into The Shrine” keeps up the intensity. An insurgent statement of searing post-punk and sneering lyricism that rails against the banality of imposed social structures.
“[It’s] about adulting, parenting and looking for those slim moments of paradise that take a lot of the daily grind to find. It’s about not letting the world get on top of you and finding the time to live, to get out of the house and celebrate life… Life can be so visceral if you get off your arse and go enjoy it. It’s literally there waiting for you. As with most of my lyrics I’m telling myself this as much as anyone else” explains Robinson.
From there on, ‘Come Out Tonight’ surges through Rage Against The Machine-esque rant-metal melees about the music industry (“Gig Buddies”), and warped groove-punk pleas to unplug from the matrix (“The Hot Seat”); through atonal alt-rock diatribes railing against the digital and political establishment (“FUK ZUK”), to frenzied pan-continental pogoing in the likes of “New York”. A record that takes Hello Cosmos firmly beyond the electroclash inspired limits of previous record ‘Dream Harder’, ‘Come Out Tonight’ shoots for the stars with a glorious cacophony of esoteric sounds that finds them daring to defy classification and conformity at every turn. Relentless in its execution, it’s a record that only stops to catch its breath with the chill-wavey atmospherics of “Awake and Bake”, a cathartic moment of clarity reflecting on first steps and friendships. And once everything is off its chest, closing with the triumphant “OLD FRIENDS KNOW”; a gospel-guided, string-laden interstellar epic that nods to the intricate majesties of The Smile or Spiritualized.
A decisive departure that sets the coordinates for uncharted new destinations, it may come as little surprise that a shake-up of Hello Cosmos’ core crew can be attributed to ‘Come Out Tonight’”s auxiliary thrust of sounds. While Ben (vox/guitars), Simon (drums), and Angela (strings/synths) remain very much in the cockpit; the collective are now joined by a new crop of full-time cosmonauts including bassist/percussionist Isaac “Dobbo” Dobson and guitarist Alex Beston of Vacant Weekend (who both joined the official live set up from 2024), sax/synth whizz Frankie Pigeon (Dilettante/BC Camplight), and harmonica player Oli Brown (of Herelduke, who also notably produced Hello Cosmos’ ‘Golden Dirt’ mixtape). Longtime fans of the collective will undoubtedly note the playing of guitarist Adrian Ingham (Deathretro) still featuring prominently across the record too.
‘Come Out Tonight’ was produced by Jamie Lockhert, who has produced all of the Hello Cosmos studio records to date, at Greenmount Studios in Leeds.
Chiming with the vital themes of community that course through the Cosmic Glue fabric and the core messages at the heart of ‘Come Out Tonight’, Hello Cosmos have spent 2025 reconnecting with the local scenes that shaped them. Playing a series of rare UK shows in 2025, carefully-picked homecoming shows in Cumbria (Solfest, Kendal Calling), Leeds, Manchester and the wider North-West, will allow the band and fans to connect with the new music in their natural environment. Standby for further shows throughout 2025-6.
With the fruits of their labours ripe and ready for revelation, new album ‘Come Out Tonight’ is just the beginning. With two new records and a blissed-out “comedown album” due for release in the imminent future, this intrepid new era of Hello Cosmos is only just beginning….
“Like LCD Soundsystem in space.” - Chris Hawkins 6 Music
“Raw driving The Who rock with a twist of The Fall.” – Louder than War
“Interchangeable and organic with a life of its own.” - God Is In The TV