Vamberator are back — and they’ve brought some spectral company. The duo, made up of Jemaur Tayle and Boris Williams (The Cure), have handed their ghostly piano lament “I Need Contact” to Rolo McGinty (The Woodentops). The result? A slow-burning, cinematic remix that feels like it’s been pulled from the wreckage of a dream.
Out on 7 November 2025 via New Reality Records, the remix arrives on a custom USB stick (just like in spy movies), loaded with bonus video material. There are also the usual digital drops on Bandcamp and streaming platforms.
McGinty’s rework – lifting the track from Vamberator’s debut album, Age of Loneliness (Unifaun Productions / Maracash) – leans deep into the melancholy. He’s brought in cellist Asakura Momoka and the sound of an ancient diesel train engine, blending fragile strings and industrial hums into Tayle’s already heart-stopping piano ballad.
“The theme is loneliness in its many forms,” says Thale. “The loss of loved ones, places, and the struggling need to connect with nature as it slowly disappears. Does a creature in the throes of extinction understand its plight? Does it continue to seek out a mate against all the odds?”
Formed from the ashes of Shelleyan Orphan, Vamberator reunites Tayle and Williams for their first new project together since 2008’s We Have Everything We Need. After the loss of Shelleyan Orphan’s Caroline Crawley, Age of Loneliness finds the pair confronting absence and connection head-on.
For McGinty, the collab was a full-circle moment:
I knew Jem in a previous life, feels like! He was impressive running Shelleyan Orphan, and we had an important mutual friend, Seb Shelton – he managed both of us. So, I would hear about what the Orphans were up to, and bump into them at Rough Trade, or occasionally watch live. Earlier this year, I checked out what Jem is up to nowadays, and immediately liked a couple of tracks… and if desired, asked to be nosey and fiddle around with them. In a way, remix perhaps, more as “Creature in My House” became, but also cinematically enhanced the mood of “I Need Contact.”
It grabbed me right away, that one. I kidnapped a cellist and down to the dungeon of decibels we went. I think we made the song more upsetting than it already is. Adding the cello made it more timeless, and to add more to the time distort I added the audio of a very old diesel train; a big red old puller from the late ‘40s. It had a bass thump that made the ground shake. It’s such an old sound. I had my recorder with and the owner showed me inside, where I recorded the engine ticking over. It’s very quiet in the mix, adding merely an atmosphere: industrial amongst the sombre string quartet tones.
I guess I had a place in Derbyshire in mind: it has spectacular arched viaducts, or maybe once trains rode them, so high up. There’s railyards… You go back in time, it feels. I thought, a suitable place for the song.
Also on the release is McGinty’s 10-minute haunted-house rework of “Creature in My House” – a dubbed-out, psychedelic sprawl that proves some ghosts like to dance.