Nil Desperandum by Obedient Hollowness

11th album by Obedient Hollowness

"On his eleventh full-length, Nil Desperandum, Shird Leopart — the singular force behind Obedient Hollowness — dives even deeper into the desolate architecture of post-punk and post-rock minimalism. Across nine instrumental, Leopart crafts an austere sonic world that feels both ritualistic and haunted.

The album’s spine is repetition — but not the kind that comforts. Rather, these loops gnaw at the listener, slowly mutating under layers of distortion and reverb. Leopart’s guitars grind and shimmer in equal measure, often circling a single phrase until it begins to disintegrate. His basslines, thick and unrelenting, act as gravitational anchors against the centrifugal pull of his freeform drumming. Occasional bursts of synth and saxophone bleed through the mix like ghost transmissions, evoking the psychic residue of early industrial and krautrock experiments.

Influences are traceable — the mechanical throb of Chrome, the grimy hypnosis of Brainbombs, the spiritual collapse of Ramleh, and the liquid time of CAN — but Nil Desperandum is far from pastiche. Leopart’s approach is fiercely personal, an unfiltered exorcism of rhythm and texture. The production is raw but deliberate, capturing the immediacy of a live improvisation without losing its compositional precision.

For all its bleakness, there’s a strange hope buried within these dirges — the album title’s stoic imperative (“Do not despair”) feels less like optimism than survival instinct. Nil Desperandum stands as both a mantra and a mirror: a portrait of endurance through repetition, of beauty found in corrosion.

Obedient Hollowness may be a one-man band, but it sounds like the echo of an entire ghost city."

> Oblique Sounds, 2026

Tracklist

1.	Shelter	3:56

2.	Brain Cloud	4:12

3.	Damn The Man	6:10

4.	A Scent Of Weakness	4:21

5.	Crash-Landed In Your Heart	3:19

6.	Mouthful Of Empty Words	3:06

7.	Less Than Nothing	4:41

8.	New Burn	7:33

9.	Havoc	2:49

Credits

released January 30, 2026

Composed, engineered & produced by Shird Leopart

Performing : B&F tenor sax, Behringer 2600 & SF-300, Duke 60's electric guitar, Fender Precision & Vantage VSS-600B basses, noises & sounds, Sunite drum kit, Syntrillium CEP 2.1

Recorded, edited & mastered at Q-Scared & SSR
From October 10th to 13th 2025
Play it deep, wide & all alone

Photos + design = Shird

© Self-Sufficient Records 2025 + 2026

www.youtube.com/channel/UCaAQvvDXd0Oexr726rCRi_Q

ssr-442

License