No Ordinary Raconteur /
Dimidium Oraculi

No Ordinary Raconteur | ^{Michael Somerset Ward}

The definitive solo album from a multi-instrumentalist of Sheffield’s post-punk scene

Sheffield, UK — Michael Somerset Ward, a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter who came up through Sheffield’s post-punk scene, presents his most personal and ambitious work to date: No Ordinary Raconteur.

A deeply cinematic concept album exploring mortality, memory and the passage of time, the record gathers an extraordinary circle of collaborators from the golden age of British experimental music.

“My music flows from the paintbox I’ve assembled over the years from Steel City rehearsals in abandoned Little Mester warrens to Motor City Gospel studios still echoing with the soundtrack of my youth.”

– Michael Somerset Ward

The album’s narrative framework is provided by Adi Newton (Clock DVA), Somerset Ward’s long-time friend and mentor, whose four-part spoken word piece Half-Life opens each chapter of the journey. Newton also lends his unmistakable voice to Delphic Response, a piece Somerset Ward describes as “how I felt DVA could have developed — electronic, but with a beating organic heart.”

A further moment of great poetry and accomplished storytelling is the existentialist noir reading of 4 Hours, an unforgettable gem of Sheffield’s industrial scene from 1981, set within that jewel of punk, jazz and experimentation that was Clock DVA’s Thirst. Here Karl D’Silva reimagines it as beat poetry, accompanied by award-winning pianist Matthew Bourne.

THE GUESTS

They bring together some of the most recognizable voices in British music of the past forty years:

— Glenn Gregory (Heaven 17) delivers a stunning vocal on Harry’s England, a track channeling the spirit of David Bowie

— Stephen Mallinder (Cabaret Voltaire) brings his distinctive presence to the hypnotic Señor Slippery, and lends both his words and his voice to Doomerati

— Gino Robair, long-time Tom Waits collaborator, contributes Harry Partch-style percussion on Half-Life 2

— Dean Honer (I Monster) provides synthesizers on several tracks, co-recorded and mastered the album, and co-wrote three of its pieces with Somerset Ward

— David Lewin contributes sonic modelling, keys and programming, co-wrote three compositions and co-recorded the album

— The ensemble is completed by Matthew Bourne, Charlotte Keeffe, Martin Archer, Andres Figueroa, Peter Rophone, Philippe Clegg, Aby Vulliamy, Michael Bardon, Alex Ward, Simon M. Elliott-Kemp, Sylwia Drwal and Loretta Chantrey

Somerset Ward himself is omnipresent, handling vocals, baritone, sopranino, alto and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, clarinet, piccolo, flute and alto flute, daf and electronics.

THE SONGS

The title track, No Ordinary Raconteur, pays homage to the late, great Scott Walker, while Dead Man’s Coat draws on a real-life encounter with producer Don Was in 1980s New York, featuring Martin Archer on sopranino saxophone and Charlotte Keeffe on trumpet.

The Future Is Here Today, sung by Somerset Ward over Dean Honer’s synthesizers and his own bass clarinet, confronts the album’s central theme directly: “When there’s less to look forward to and more to remember / The future’s here today.”

The Half-Life cycle concludes with its fourth part, whose final words — “we abide in these” — evoke the closing scene of Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, fading into an apocalyptic wind.

Butchers of Distinction, a musique concrète piece, arrives unannounced: sixty seconds of sonic shock designed to jolt the listener from their reverie, inspired by the horrors of war and Picasso’s Guernica.

THE COVER

The cover image is an original work by Adi Newton: Non-Euclidean Portrait of Michael Somerset Ward, acrylic on canvas, 2026. Sleeve design by Adi Newton, graphic layout by Gabriele Fantuzzi.

No Ordinary Raconteur is not merely an album. It is a complete artistic statement — the culmination of a lifetime spent at the intersection of experimentation, craftsmanship and profound human feeling.

ABOUT MICHAEL SOMERSET WARD

Michael Somerset Ward first emerged in the early 1980s as a member of the legendary Clock DVA, forming a lasting creative partnership with Adi Newton. He later led Floy Joy in a celebrated collaboration with producer Don Was, recording albums in Detroit and New York. As a songwriter he has penned multi-platinum hits for major international acts while maintaining a parallel career as an experimental artist under the Mzylkypop alias. His work spans five decades, countless collaborations, and a unique synthesis of organic instrumentation and electronic innovation.

Dimidium Oraculi | ^{Adi Newton & Michael Somerset Ward}

The dark twin of No Ordinary Raconteur – Exclusive to the Rizosfera webstores

Sheffield / Southend-on-Sea — Adi Newton and Michael Somerset Ward sign a complete work together, as authors, for the first time: Dimidium Oraculi. Four pieces, close to half an hour, released alongside No Ordinary Raconteur, the Somerset Ward album of which this record is the dark twin. It is also the tenth release on Armcomm Europe, and marks its five years. Its bearing, however, is not celebratory: it is oracular.

At Delphi the Pythia sat on the tripod, above a cleft in the earth from which the vapours rose. She spoke in the name of Apollo, whom the Greeks called Loxias, the Oblique: words always true, never plain. Whoever climbed to the sanctuary for an answer came back down with a riddle. Heraclitus put it most exactly: “the Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives a sign”. Dimidium Oraculi means “half of the oracle”. The title does not say which half, nor does it promise that the other exists. The oracle does not resolve: it raises the stakes. The two faces on the record are likewise sovereign over one half only, each unaware of what the other knows. One gives a sign, the other listens, and then the other way round.

-from the Dimidium Oraculi booklet

THE DARK TWIN

Dimidium Oraculi does not come from No Ordinary Raconteur: it comes after it, into the space it leaves. That is why it is not offered on its own — this is not a condition of sale, it is the form of the record. The two albums call to one another and answer in signs, in things left unsaid, in stories recomposed obliquely, with more questions than answers.

The four pieces grow from material that already has a history: the Half-Life poem, scattered in four fragments across No Ordinary Raconteur; Delphic Response, from the same vinyl; Future Cartography, from Threnodies and Ad Hocs; Last Signal, from Newtones. Here they are remade, not reprised. Four sonic sculptures.

TWO SIDES, TWO FACES

The vinyl has no A side and no B side: two unnumbered halves, a Michael’s side and an Adi’s side, as the runout inscriptions say. On the labels, two paintings by Adi Newton: the Non-Euclidean Portrait of Michael Somerset Ward 2 (2026) and the self-portrait Mirrored Head Study 2 (2022). The same hand, two gazes. Each side belongs to the choices of the man portrayed on it.

On Michael’s side, Delphic Response (Lower Drop mix) returns “reimagined in the industrial throat of The White Whale”, chiseled by David Lewin’s sonic modelling around Newton’s voice; Last Signal (Somerset reimagined), an instrumental from 2013 never cut into vinyl, is reborn through Matthew Bourne’s grand piano and Somerset Ward’s bass clarinet, and at the end finds a voice it never had. On Adi’s side, Future Cartography Re-Mapped (Newton mix) overturns the free jazz of the original into an epic electronic ballad, and Half-Life Extended (Newton mix) puts the whole poem back together over new music, leaden and spectral: “an electronic requiem”.

MORE THAN FORTY YEARS

Between Thirst and Advantage, in 1982, Michael Somerset Ward joined the Clock DVA line-up for a few months. From that spell only one recording survives, We Cast Tall Shadows, released on cassette alone and never on vinyl, along with a handful of photographs. In 2025 he was back on stage with the group, in the United Kingdom and the United States. Michael calls this continuity Clock DVA-continuity: as though the ‘deviated’ group had passed unharmed through a temporal cavity, from Advantage straight to Dimidium Oraculi. In 2026 the collaboration multiplies: he plays baritone saxophone on the remake of 4 Hours and sopranino on the remake of Sensorium, both released on Thirst 2026 by Mute Records.

SHEFFIELD–THAMES

Somerset Ward has never left Sheffield, except to play on stages half the world over. Newton left in the early eighties, a citizen of the world: Florence, Milan, Berlin, Truro, and finally the Thames estuary. A line runs between the two of them, and it is the axis Armcomm Europe has been building slowly, by choice: a mature industrial sound, aware of its own history.

FIVE YEARS, TEN WORKS

ARMEU010. Five years of Armcomm Europe, since January 2022: the partnership between Adi Newton, producer and artistic director, and Rizosfera, producer of polymedia and transmedia works. Ten releases. Dimidium Oraculi marks them, and it does not go through distribution: it is made for the community that follows Armcomm Europe and Rizosfera.
Inside it there is the energy of five years of work. Dimidium Oraculi is not a conclusion. It is a threshold.

Cross it.