Reality Eaters
Reality Eaters is my debut album, released on NMC Recordings in July 2026.
It features three pieces of music intersecting science, technology and music - Warp, a concerto for piano and orchestra, Gravity, for string quartet, and Silicon, for orchestra and electronics.
Warp and Silicon are performed by the BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Vimbayi Kaziboni, and Joseph Havlat is the piano soloist. Gravity is recorded by the Piatti Quartet for this album.
The album artwork was created by Natalie Holroyd. It is a spectographic analysis of every second of audio in the album (each reperesented by a dot), ordered according to similarity.
Reality Eaters is available on all the streaming platforms, of course, but these are the best places to buy CDs or digital:
Buy on NMC Records - you can also download the liner notes for free
Below, some reviews of Reality Eaters (click titles for full reviews):
"There is a marvellous sense of mind-expanding wonderment that characterises the experience of listening to Robert Laidlow’s music. Yet while his compositions are often sparked by such knottily complex source material as, for instance, the science of gravitational waves, this is music that agitates the heart just as much as the intellect. This debut portrait album from NMC is a tour de force. (...)
The disc closes with Silicon for large symphony orchestra and electronics, which explores the technical processes and philosophical challenges of AI with rare originality (thank goodness). (...) The result is uncanny, provocative and beautiful – and makes for a fitting close to this outstanding album."
"Robert Laidlow is as at home in the realms of science and technology as he is in the world of classical music. As this NMC debut album demonstrates, his intricate, wildly imaginative work is eminently approachable, even if the core concepts are highly complex. (...)
The intrepid Joseph Havlat boldly goes where no pianist has gone before amid the distorting fabric of orchestral space-time. Strident orchestral lines spiral ever upwards, stretching instruments to their limits, while the piano maintains its course towards a serene conclusion. Handsomely recorded, the BBC Philharmonic and Vimbayi Kaziboni offer vibrantly detailed support. (...)
Silicon, a mind-expanding three-movement work of symphonic proportions, employs a cheeky wit as it reckons with the impact of AI on human creativity."
"Music that is restlessly creative, complex but also direct and entirely human.
Laidlow creates music that seems in dialgoue with the music of the past (...) and the future. (...) (The) music’s surface (is) characterised by daringly-scored combinations - 26 gongs at one stage! - and the philosophy behind the piece never overwhelms the sonic experience. Silicon is richly multifarious, imaginative, funny (in the best sense), challenging, lovingly played - and, in its last movement, ecstatically peculiar."
I've written about this music in the album's liner notes, so that's the place to go to find out more. Alternatively, quite a lot has been written (by me and others) about Silicon in particular, which you can see some of here. Gravity and Warp both have much more detailed musical discussions in my PhD thesis (not for the faint of heart).
These are are fantastic recordings and I'm so grateful to these performers and more broadly to everyone who has supported my music so far. We had lots of support in making this happen, so thank you to NMC's supporters and benefactors. This album contains music I wrote during my PhD at the Royal Northern College of Music's Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music (PRiSM), so a special thanks should go to them and my supervisors Emily Howard, Marcus du Sautoy, David de Roure and Simon Webb.