Set for release on 21st November, ‘Free Flow’ is the new album by UK-based electronic artist Inwards, the project of musician Kristian Shelley. Drawing inspiration from flow states - those moments of full creative absorption where time seems to slow and action becomes effortless - the album explores what it means to be “in the moment.”
From his first releases, Inwards has delighted both fans and critics with unshakable melodies and playful productions that draw from modular synths, found sounds, and myriad electronic and acoustic instruments. Coverage from the likes of Resident Advisor (“Otherworldly electronic music”), Electronic Sound (“Engulfing and reassuring”), MOJO (“Warm hearted modular synth contemplations”), Clash (“Pivots between machine precision and human expression”), and DMY (“Blissful and mesmerizing electronic music”) has matched daytime and specialist play on BBC 6 Music, BBC Radio 1, Radio X, BBC Introducing, and the likes of KCRW and NPR. As well as playing immersive live AV headline shows, Inwards has supported Lapalux, Forest Swords, Tyondi Braxton and Ulrich Shnauss.
‘Free Flow’ was dictated by mood and movement, built primarily from instinctive live improvisations on hardware synthesisers and samplers. It trusts repetition, invites looseness, and honours mistakes. Patterns evolve slowly, rhythms drift in and out of focus, and melodies surface like memories before dissolving again. The album opens space for breath, for reflection, getting lost.
Recorded in and around the wooded Worcestershire landscape where Inwards lives and works, natural textures - wind, insects, distant birdsong - weave subtly into the music, grounding the electronics in place and atmosphere. The forest isn’t just a backdrop; it’s part of the record’s nervous system.
Each track captures a moment of internal stillness or external motion. There’s a rawness to it, not “unfinished”, but intentionally unpolished. Like the flow state itself, it resists overthinking.
Ultimately, ‘Free Flow’ is less about composition than it is about capturing presence. It’s music for walking, for focusing, for daydreaming, for tuning in…and out. A sonic reflection of that liminal space between control and surrender, between structure and drift. Between what you're doing, and what’s doing you. It’s not music that demands attention - it invites it. And in return, it offers a quiet kind of clarity.