The Sixteenth Releases New Album ‘Winters In The World’
The Sixteenth, the project of Wellington-based composer Richard Walley, announces his third album Winters In The World, out now on all major streaming platforms.
The album takes as its subject the Anglo-Saxon year – a calendar in which the pre-Christian seasonal cycle and the Christian liturgical year coexisted, neither displacing the other. Inspired by Eleanor Parker’s 2022 book Winters in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year, the album traces twelve festivals and seasons in their Old English names, from Winterfylleth (the first full moon of winter, the ancient year-boundary) through Advent, Christmas, Candlemas, Lent, Easter, Midsummer, the autumn harvest, and back to the winter full moon again.
“The Anglo-Saxon calendar is two things at once,” says Walley. “You have Advent sitting inside Winterfylleth. Candlemas falling in Lencten. Easter as Ēastre. The pre-Christian and the Christian weren’t in conflict – they just coexisted. The album tries to hold that same tension. It doesn’t resolve it, because it never was resolved.”
The release date was also a deliberate choice: 11 July falls the day after Matariki, Aotearoa’s own celestial new year – one of the few major calendar markers here that isn’t a transplant from the northern hemisphere, unlike Christmas or Easter. For an album about how old calendars mark the turning of the year, it felt like the right week to put it out.
The twelve tracks move between ambient orchestral pieces and progressive house music. Seven atmospheric pieces – Winterfylleth, Candelmæsse, Lencten, Witsun, Hlāfmæsse, Ealra Hālgena Mæsse, and Winterfylleth (Reprise) – fill out the slower seasons of the calendar. Five house tracks – Tōcyme, Cristesmæsse, Ēastre, Midsumor, and Mihhelmæsse – run at 120 BPM with four-to-the-floor rhythms, modal harmonies, and orchestral builds and drops.
A Beatport EP featuring the lead track Midsumor was released on 24 June 2026, timed to the summer solstice. The full album follows on 11 July on all streaming platforms.
Winters in the World is The Sixteenth’s third album, following You Could Be Happy (2024) and The Mountain (2025). It has been described as “a stunning collision of traditional musical disciplines with forward thinking structures and sound design” (PlasticMag) and reviewed five stars by Muzic.NZ.
Photo Credit: Lara Bland
