San Francisco Bay Area composer, producer, and musician Dren McDonald announces Vox Pterous (Appearing Records), a stunning new album due July 31, 2026 on which he takes the instrumental architecture of his celebrated 2023 record Pterous and opens it up entirely, inviting a remarkable ensemble of vocalists into those layered, sonic worlds to create something wholly new. The result is one of the most emotionally resonant records of his career that sits at a unique intersection of contemporary classical composition, songwriting, and the warmth of the human voice.
Pterous, (latin for ‘with wings’) the record from which Vox Pterous grows, was itself an act of devotion, built into structures McDonald described as guitar orchestras: layers upon layers of single-note phrases recorded over and over on different instruments from different distances. Each song was dedicated to a different person he had lost within a three-year span. As he wrote at the time of those sessions, “sometimes the only way to work through grief like that is to make something.” WVIA heard in those pieces “a pleasing journey into the kind of minimalist musical world pioneered by people like Steve Reich, with the kind of obsessive layering of instrumental sounds that lends a distinctive texture to the work.” With Vox Pterous, McDonald returned to those same pieces and discovered there was still more to say, beginning with an experiment that would unlock the entire project.
That experiment was “Fading,” the album’s sixth track, recorded with vocalist Sophia James, whose song “Somebody New” has earned over 25 million streams on Spotify and whose recent TikTok trend “Group 7” brought her to a vast new audience. McDonald knew James through her grandfather, Chuck Wackerman, his high school jazz band teacher, and understood that she possessed both the musicality and the emotional depth to carry a vocal performance capable of elevating the piece beyond its instrumental origins. The strength of her performance gave McDonald the confidence to arrange the remaining songs and set out in search of the remarkable group of collaborators who would complete the album.
That search became its own essential part of the creative process, a series of loose connections, and cold calls into the void, combined with the slow process of composing each lyric and melody before anything was sent to a vocalist. The ensemble McDonald assembled is a wide assortment of musicians hailing from their own unique musical corners: Amelie Anna (Death Stranding 2 Soundtrack) appears on three tracks, Carla Kihlstedt, whose work with Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Tin Hat Trio and Tom Waits has long placed her among the most distinctive voices in contemporary experimental music, is featured on “Resting of Light.” Paula Frazer (Tarnation) lends her unmistakable presence to “Aviation Eyes” alongside artist, Girl Swallows Nightingale, and Lily Bloom and Daria Novo share the luminous “She’s The Sky.” The album was produced, engineered, and mixed by McDonald himself, with additional mixing from Bryan Jerden on two tracks, stereo mastering by Piper Payne, and artwork by Christine MacTernan. The album is also available in Atmos on platforms that support immersive music.
McDonald’s credentials as one of the most versatile and widely heard composers working in immersive and interactive media today. His game credits include Counter-Strike: Global Offensive/2 for Valve, Ghost Recon Commander for Ubisoft, and the award-winning indie title Gathering Sky for Pontoco, which earned him three Game Audio Network Guild Awards in 2016 including Best Indie Game Audio. His music has been heard in Stranger Things VR for Netflix/Tender Claws, VR animated films such as Mescaform Hill: The Missing Five (Tribeca 2022), and Perennials (Venice Film Festival in 2023).
His solo catalogue is equally distinguished, encompassing The String Arcade (2014), which won a GANG Award for Best Cover/Remix, his collaboration project, polyheDren, (Psychic, 2022), which featured collaborations with Josh Freese (Foo Fighters/NIN), Nels Cline (Wilco), The Residents, and Iva Bittová (Nonesuch), and Oceanic (2024) on Appearing Records, which The Answer Is In The Beat likened to “an underwater equivalent of Daniel Lanois’ spacious Americana.”
The LA Times has written that “McDonald offers symbolic and metaphoric dreamscapes”, and Electronica UK noted “his approach to creating immersive auditory experiences offers listeners a rich, three-dimensional sound journey.”
With Vox Pterous, McDonald has created something that honours its origins in loss while reaching toward something generous, and alive. The lyrics of “Anchors Up,” the album’s opening track, set the tone with quiet, circling precision: “Drawing little circles, drawing little circles rise and fall / Pulling in the anchor, pulling up and anchors away.” It is music made for listening deeply, from a composer who has spent a career proving that the most immersive sonic experiences are built not from spectacle but from patience, accumulation, and care.
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