Kieran E Scott has spent much of his life moving between photography and music, two interests that began around the same time when he was a child in New Zealand. His brother Paul went on to play in the 1980s band Pop Mechanix, while Scott briefly played guitar with Jordan Luck before leaving Aotearoa for the UK to study photography. Decades later, he returned to songwriting under the name Agneu, a variation on his mother’s maiden name, Agnew. Air and Twigs grew from a decision in August 2025 to start writing songs from memories, photographs and stories rather than working primarily with abstract instrumental music. Scott describes the eight-song album as a series of musical vignettes arranged around a loose narrative sequence.
That background helps explain why Air and Twigs often seems more interested in maintaining a particular perspective than constantly changing direction. “How Bright’s the Moon” establishes much of the album’s vocabulary quickly: strummed major and minor chords, a steady 4/4 rhythm, bass, pads and plenty of reverb. The arrangement stays relatively consistent, eventually making room for a conventional guitar solo rather than a dramatic structural shift. “Afterlife” pares things back into a melancholy acoustic ballad, while “Sundays for Dreaming” has one of the album’s stronger grooves. I especially liked the combination of bass and pads here; there is almost a disco quality underneath the otherwise subdued production. The title track follows the record’s established approach before opening into something considerably larger, introducing percussion and textures that give the second half a more global, cinematic character. “The Reason Birds Fly” is another standout. Lucy Mackintosh takes the lead vocal, accompanied by picked guitar before the arrangement expands around her. Scott recorded the album in Ponsonby, Tāmaki Makaurau, with Steve Melville handling drums, percussion, engineering and mixing, and William Bowden mastering the record. Kieran E Scott The additional voices and instrumentation help make these broader sections some of the most effective moments on Air and Twigs. “Calling Out Your Name,” meanwhile, stays closer to straightforward rock, gradually becoming brighter and more hopeful as it progresses. The songs clearly belong together, and the production gives all eight tracks a recognizable identity. At the same time, Agneu rarely moves far outside the vocabulary established early on. Similar effects, spacious arrangements and heavily treated guitars recur throughout, and there were occasions when the amount of reverb was a little excessive for my taste. Still, the fundamentals are strong. The grooves hold up, the arrangements are carefully constructed, and the record becomes more interesting when Agneu allows the songs to expand beyond their acoustic-rock foundations. Air and Twigsis a cohesive debut for the project, with enough strong moments to suggest that Scott’s transition from observing stories through a camera to telling them through songs was worth making.
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