Interview In The Studio: Antony Szmierek
Not one year on from the release of his debut album, dancefloor auteur Antony Szmierek has already signed off on a second full-length - a sincere, “sadder” offering born from life’s only constant.
Ever thought about getting to know yourself? That’s the question Antony Szmierek asks in his recent short film, a pseudo-documentary project composed of behind-the-scenes snippets recorded over the year that changed his life, and shared on the eve of this new one. We see him rehearsing, and backstage, summoning the euphoric, preacher-like presence fans have come to expect from his live shows; we see him in the throes of it all, conducting his human symphony; we see him in the aftermath, addressing its deafening silence. Because the release of his debut album, ‘Service Station At The End Of The Universe’, was also the point at which Antony became somewhat untethered from the spacecraft, privately free-wheeling through the ether while publicly on cloud nine.
When he and DIY last spoke, as ‘Service Station…’ crash-landed to Earth in February last year, he was modestly self-aware of standing on a precipice: “it’s hard releasing something when you know it’s going to have an audience,” he noted then. But when a brace of significant changes - both personal and professional - moved the goalposts even more, any such foresight fell short. “By the time it was March [2025], I had an album out and was on tour,” he recalls today, speaking candidly via Zoom. “I was doing all these things that I’ve seen people do and never really thought I’d get to - but could sort of see coming - and it was a real moment of [thinking] ‘I’m on my own’.”
Attempting to steady the ship and maintain some semblance of normality, Antony spent the following months intermittently returning to his Manchester base, swapping tour dates, festivals, and “big pop star weeks in London” for “the same horrible flat” he’d lived in during his former life as a teacher. “I was going, ‘I’m still the same; it’s not changed me’,” he says. “I was really actively separating both of those parts of myself, because I thought that would help, but it actually didn’t in the end.”
What did help, though, was having somewhere to focus the fragments: an as-yet-unannounced New Project that he began writing while still very much embroiled in the whirlwind of its predecessor. “There could have been a bigger gap,” he admits, “but it was all just so emotionally tumultuous and everything was changing, so it was kind of the perfect time to write.” In essence, he explains: “I sort of woke up at the end of festival season with half a record, and half a personality, and half an identity in Manchester; and I just thought ‘fuck, I need to sort this out’.” He smiles slightly: every cloud. “But you know, it’s made for a good record.”
“There could have been a bigger gap [between albums], but it was all just so emotionally tumultuous and everything was changing, so it was kind of the perfect time to write.”
Now based in Bristol - where he rubs shoulders with producer/collaborator Max Rad, and fellow artists/mates like Getdown Services and BIG SPECIAL - Antony’s busy proving that, perhaps, a change really is as good as a rest.
While Manchester will always be the bedrock of his artistic identity, he also admits that the city gradually became more claustrophobic as his profile grew. “It’s my own fault - I put out a Manchester record,” he says wryly, pointing up at the wall behind him, where a framed print of ‘The Great Pyramid Of Stockport’’s single artwork is proudly displayed. “It’s so lovely, but it’s so overwhelming. That is what I was aiming for - to be known - because I guess you want more people to listen to the music, but other than that it’s not something I particularly love… the anonymity is important to me.”
Bristol, then, is something of a blank slate - a place where Antony the person and Antony the artist can be “glued back together”, and where he can broaden his horizons beyond the specific sense of place pervading ‘Service Station…’. In lieu of the Baggy, ‘90s dance palette that coloured his debut, this next outing promises to be “much more future-facing”. Particularly intriguing are, he tells us, two UKG-tinged tracks, which both have “a really interesting feature on them”. “But,” he sighs, looking genuinely pained, “I cannot tell you who they are.”
What we do know is that said features are a gleeful exercise in re-contextualisation. Basically, if anyone was from the dance world, I wanted them on the more alternative-leaning tracks, and if anyone was from the indie/alternative world, I wanted them on the dance tracks. So you’re hearing someone that you’re used to doing, say, piano ballads, but they’re on a progressive trance poem or some shit.” He grins mischievously. “If anyone was going to be on it, it wasn’t for the sake of it.”
“I think I want to believe in magic. When everything’s so stark and bleak in the outside world, we need something to believe in.”
At odds with its origins, Antony recalls the recording process for this next instalment with real fondness. Tracked primarily in Max’s Bristol home studio - besides a stint at Leeds’ The Nave with Alex Greaves, who lent some “Yorkshire cynicism” to three of its darker cuts - the record once again has the pair’s “embarrassingly wholesome” collaboration at its core. “We’re like two Labradors playing with each other,” Antony laughs. “And the feeling we have when we come out of that studio some days, when we’ve got it right, is like being high as shit. I’m walking around like I’ve done all the drugs in the world. If I can bring that feeling into the shows and people can feel that with the record, then great!”
Simultaneously “a sadder record” and “more of a dance album” than ‘Service Station…’ (“you can RUN to this album!” he proclaims), his second is also a more spiritual affair, swapping the former’s character-driven, sci-fi concept for Magnolia-esque meditations on luck, loneliness, and the inherently human habit of reaching for something bigger than ourselves, of searching desperately for meaning in the mundane. “If you see a bag of crisps blowing across the harbour, should you text your ex, or should you say: ‘that’s just a bag of crisps?’” Antony quips.
Chief among these lyrical portents are birds - namely, the heron, a cross-cultural symbol of stillness, patience, and transformation. “I think in Japanese culture, they’re seen as standing between two worlds - the mystical world, and the natural world,” he nods, explaining how one such sentinel became a familiar, peaceful presence on his regular waterside walks. “And I always felt like I was sort of between two worlds too. It was just perfect.”
How exactly the heron figures in LP2, we couldn’t possibly say - other than that, at one point, it’s endowed with the eternal wisdom of John Cooper Clarke. Antony smiles: “Like everyone, I think I want to believe in magic. When everything’s so stark and bleak in the outside world, we need something to believe in.”
Given the painful circumstances which bore its first writing sessions, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Antony Szmierek’s next move might be a little more jaded. From the sounds of it, though, it’s almost the opposite: an album shot through with sadness, yes, but also herons, heart, and a still-unshakeable sense of hope. “I do think I am just naturally predisposed to be optimistic,” he affirms. “Because this is my balm; even if I’m sad, and even if I’m hard on myself, I need to feel like the music has a purpose - that it can’t just be for me. What’s it for? How’s it going to help people? That’s what it’s always got to be.”
Records, etc at
Antony Szmierek - Decoding Birdsong
Antony Szmierek - Service Station At The End Of The Universe
Antony Szmierek - Roadmap
As featured in the February 2026 issue of DIY, out now.
More like this
Antony Szmierek announces details of second album ‘Decoding Birdsong’
It’s due to arrive just 18 months after his space-voyaging debut LP.
6th May 2026
Antony Szmierek returns with debut 2026 release ‘The Heron’
It’s his first new music since the arrival of ‘The Service Station At The End Of The Universe’ last year.
11th March 2026
Manchester Seen and Heard: The city’s music scene as told by local music community
To celebrate the upcoming BRITs Fringe taking over Manchester, we asked a handful of the city’s key industry figures to tell us more about the local music scene.
19th February 2026
Byrne’s Night graduates to London’s KOKO for a triumphant victory lap
A pun-based Talking Heads tribute night turned on-tour production: Byrne’s night — qu’est-ce que c’est?
28th January 2026
Featuring Yard Act, Death Cab For Cutie, Graham Coxon, Maisie Peters and more.