Drexler Finds Light in the Quiet: “Saturdays” Marks the Most Hopeful Moment of Olympia-5

Image by Toby Shain

Australian/Hong Kong composer and multi-instrumentalist Drexler's music stands on its own for its soft-focus intimacy. But what lies beneath is much more: his forthcoming album, Olympia-5 is a record pulled from the raw edges of distance, grief, and reflection.

"Saturdays" is the latest single to arrive from the record, perhaps the project's most luminous moment yet.

Olympia-5 took shape during one of the most quietly devastating stretches of Drexler’s life. While living in the UK, he learned that his father back home in Australia had relapsed with lymphoma and would spend more than six months in hospital care. There is no moment that would make distance feel longer than ever, farther than most.

Searching for a way to reach across oceans, Drexler began sending his father improvised piano recordings - a way to soften the sterilitiy of the hospital room. Those improvised sketches eventually became the emotional blueprint for Olympia-5, a collection of solo piano meditations woven with ambient electronics, sitting in the quiet space between care and helplessness. It’s Drexler’s most intimate body of work yet - reflective, unguarded, and full of the stillness that grief often demands.

"Saturdays" feels like an exhale. A piece that drifts back to memory, and that soft-focus nostalgia of childhood and joy. Moving with a gentle, dreamlike optimism, the track charts a journey through the glow of a weekend morning, the fleeting dreamscape, the lens of a child. One of hope.

Image by Toby Shain

To accompany the release, Drexler tapped Aotearoa/New Zealand filmmaker Isaac Knights-Washbourn, whose visual work has long explored the quiet rituals of place and distance. He created a film for “Saturdays” that is stitched from fragments gathered across years and continents: New Zealand, Australia, Portugal, England, and Scotland, crafting a constellation of images.

Now based in the UK, Drexler has built a reputation for expansive sound design that blurs classical minimalism with electronic ambience. His work has landed on BBC Radio 3’s Unclassified, KEXP, BBC Sounds, and The List, while his film and TV compositions have scored award-winning projects across continents.

Olympia-5, set for release in early 2026 via Sonderhouse, marks a shift inward, tracing the emotional cartography between father and son, between presence and absence, between what we remember and what we fear losing.

With “Saturdays,” Drexler offers a small, shining refuge at the album’s centre: a reminder that even in the middle of uncertainty, there are moments of weightless clarity that return to us when we need them most.

Listen to "Saturdays":