Jem Finer and John Matthias turn a church's map code into an album title
The Pogues founder and the physicist release Almost Starlight, recorded in an 11th-century Felpham church and named after its What3Words coordinates.
BY JOLT Staff · Sep 10 2026 · 1 min readJem Finer and John Matthias released Almost Starlight on September 09, 2026, via Touch. It is their first album worked on from scratch together, built from improvisation and recorded in an 11th-century church in Felpham, on the south coast of England. It arrives on CD, cassette and vinyl LP. The title is literal: per Matthias, the church's location sits at the What3Words coordinates Downhill.Almost.Starlight, so the pair took the last word for the record.
Finer is a founding member of The Pogues and the creator of Longplayer. Matthias is a theoretical physicist who made the Fragmented Orchestra project. They met about 20 years ago in a Totnes pub. 'It was in a pub in Totnes. We talked about everything and then Jem played in my band,' Matthias said. In mid-August, roughly 200 people saw the duo perform at the same church.
Finer is wary of tidy framing. 'It's not like we consciously said, let's make an album where time and its mysteries are conceptually essential, but it is interesting how it has cropped up,' he said.
