after the fact

After the Fact is Names On Tapes’ second album of 2025: six pieces of anger, breath and beauty. If the debut traced the degradation of memory, this one confronts the chaos of a post-truth world: angrier, more abstract, and noticeably more physical.

Guitar moves front and centre, distorted, ringing, sometimes feral, cutting through tape-scarred electronics, vintage drum machines and synths.

“Real” instruments carry the record: live drum kit, clarinet, saxophone, woodwinds and brass (yes, tuba), and devotional strings, often disguised as synths until the breath or bow gives them away.

Between the weight and the noise lie some of NOT’s most emotional passages yet, culminating in “Two Words for Light”, an unapologetically optimistic coda that chooses hope over all.