The Foundling Wheel built noise-saturated mountains of programmed polyrhythms and bitcrushed distortion.
A solo act, his brutally overdriven guitars, loops, and samples twist and career between twitchy introspection and a "wail of screeching banshee sonics.” Pretty collides with ugly and melodies shatter into shimmering pieces. Mixing the fractured experimentalism of Xiu Xiu, the machine-gunning intensity of Big Black, and the devastated romanticism of Joy Division, The Foundling Wheel creates a post-industrial art-punk that placed him among Edinburgh's finest underground racketeers.
The Foundling Wheel was active from 2007 to 2011 and shared the stage with Xiu Xiu, Pivot, The Twilight Sad, So So Modern, Zombie Zombie, Drum Eyes, Felix Kubin, and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, and was part of the Bear Scotland collective with Meursault, DeadBoyRobotics, Withered Hand, and Enfant Bastard. His eponymous debut album was released in 2008. The single “Noises Like Ashes” was released in 2009, and May Day/10:24 in 2010.
"braiding chromatic sheets of singeing electro-bending between frayed laces of gleaming melody."
- Billy Hamilton, The Skinny
- Billy Hamilton, The Skinny
"Experimental mental music for robots to have sex to"
- Gamma Ray, HOBO/Confusion is Sex
- Gamma Ray, HOBO/Confusion is Sex
"It's beepy, it's insane, it's shouty. It's angry but clever. It makes me want to drive a motorcycle the wrong way down the motorway. Naked."
- Milo McLaughlin, I Hear A New World, The Skinny
- Milo McLaughlin, I Hear A New World, The Skinny
"an H-bomb of machine-driven chime that coins searing racket against sun-kissed refrain." - Billy Hamilton, Clash
"Like a cracked toy from the 80’s being played to death with a hybrid of Ian Curtis & Mark E Smith fronting, TFW are as exciting as they are innovative!" - Subba Cultcha
"brilliant electronic madness."
- Euan, The Steinberg Principle
- Euan, The Steinberg Principle