Matt Baber and Richard Wileman never intended to make a record together, but through a combination of serendipity, fruitful raids on their respective archives, and a natural musical chemistry they found themselves with an album. They walk Prog through the creation of Baber Wileman, from accidental conception to a finished product that’s taken them both by surprise.

Words: David West

Richard Wileman and Matt Baber: an unplanned joy.

PRESS/RICHARD WILEMAN

From small acorns grow lofty oaks is as apt a metaphor as any for the new album by two stalwarts of the current British prog scene, Sanguine Hum’s Matt Baber and Richard Wileman from Karda Estra. The pair met back in 2011 at Kavus Torabi’s north London event based around his Believers Roast label, Roastfest, which led to a collaboration on one song on Karda Estra’s 2013 album Mondo Profundo. Then, during lockdown in early 2021, Wileman reached out to Baber to see if he’d be interested in having a listen to a song he was working on… and from that single seed gradually sprouted a whole album. “That was the joy of it really, it just happened,” says Baber.

At the time, keyboardist Baber wasn’t even considering making new music. Having completed Sanguine Hum’s A Trace Of Memory in 2020, Baber says there was, “no fuel in the tank to do another album, so what was really, really nice for me was having that energy coming from Richard. There was no pressure and that allowed it to just develop into an album project. I think if Richard had written in January and said, ‘Let’s do an album!’ I would probably have gone, ‘No way.’”