CUTS is the musical project of Anthony Tombling Jr, a musician and filmmaker working across sound and image. His work as CUTS is deeply conceptual and possessed of a distinctive aesthetic that is rooted in politics, landscape, ecology and the moving image. Tombling often uses his own films as the triggers for CUTS tracks, giving voice to the spaces and places he has filmed, and meaning his music resonates with a definite soundtrack quality.

For Tombling, film and music are creatively intertwined. CUTS was born from trips around abandoned buildings, where he became fascinated by structures and sites that seemed to be in a permanent state of decay – original filming locations included Bristol’s old post office, warehouse buildings that have since been razed for flats, and an eerie and crumbling psychiatric hospital whose long corridors he travelled, and in which there were still beds with straps in tact. “I would go out and and break into empty buildings and film their decay,” he explains, “leaving the camera on for hours, then taking it back to the studio and using these images as a creative prompt. 

Tombling began releasing as CUTS with Village Green in 2018 and since then has released four EPS and (as of 2020), two full length albums, although he has been making music much longer. He is a prolific creator, and in fertile periods often makes a track per day. 

The first pair of EPs, EXIST, and their follow up, the Dream Voyager EP (2018) were triggered by experiences of sleep paralysis he had following a serious car crash in 2012, which he describes as “like being witness to your own dreams”. EXIST began as a 40-minute film with a soundtrack, and was later screened woodland at night for The Dark Outside, and in a disused morgue for Submerged festival.

They were followed by A Gradual Decline album, and the A Slow Decay EP, which addressed ecological anxieties and climate crisis. These releases were prompted by A River, the documentary Tombling had made about a community trying to prevent fracking in their local area in Wales. A trip to Iceland unlocked the aesthetic of the music, for which he generated rhythmic elements out of geological transformation, and used field recordings he used of ice collapsing from glaciers to reflect the frailties of the environment.

He returns to Village Green in 2020 with UNREAL, an album largely made in lockdown after he moved to a remote location outside Bristol, where he found he had no phone signal or internet access. “I would forage for my dinner and then submerge myself in writing music,” he explains, which soon resulted in a full album, one that is cathartic and melancholic in equal parts, dealing with pandemic, the rise of populism and misinformation.

Film and music have always gone hand in hand for Tombling, and they are symbiotic in his creative process. He runs his own film company, Unit 3 films, and recently worked on the visuals for Massive Attack’s Eutopia EP. “Having two forms to work with is cathartic,” he explains. “They inform each other. When I’m not feeling so interested in making music, I go and capture images with my cameras, and visa versa. I’m always looking to push my music forward in terms of experimentation but it also has to fit into the parameters I’ve crafted for myself, which is a lot like my visual aesthetic as a filmmaker. By using both disciplines symbiotically I’ve created something that is completely mine”