Blender 5.3 adds native Gaussian Splatting support, enables Vulkan by default on Linux, and improves rendering, animation, and video editing.

For years, the motif of the forest has appeared throughout his work: not as scenery, but as an inner space – a place of memory, proximity and movement. With Vren, this language becomes central, forming an album that unfolds as a quiet act of dedication. The title itself comes from the private sphere – a nickname for his long-time partner, who has been part of this musical path from the very beginning. In that sense, Vren is a subtle homage to shared time: to growth, to complexity, and to the rare, clear moments in between. Sonically, the album moves between sparse ambient passages and intricately layered, rhythmically detailed pieces. Elements of IDM, jungle and future garage surface throughout – at times recalling the structural finesse of early Autechre, the textural depth of Squarepusher, or the spatial sensitivity associated with Burial – yet always remaining grounded in firnwald’s own language. Some tracks open into still, almost weightless spaces; others fold in on themselves, becoming dense, restless and difficult to trace. The artwork reflects this approach. Based on a reworking of a piece by Australian artist Sydney Long, rooted in Art Nouveau, the image has accompanied firnwald since a shared journey to Sydney over a decade ago. Its central motif – a suspended space between ground and canopy – became the visual starting point for the album, now reinterpreted as a cover in its own right. ————— Some track stories : Lynx Population At a farmhouse in the Bavarian Forest, we noticed how the return of the lynx even changed the behavior of the deer around the area. The lynx is rarely seen, but it’s there again. I used real lynx samples in the track — sounds most people normally never hear. Laufenau Laufenau is a large meadow near the river Alz in Altenmarkt. We spent a lot of time there with the kids. The main melody was created by my son using the Koala Sampler, and I later developed the track further from there. For me, it’s about taking impressions from places and turning them into something personal. Chain “Chain” is built around repetition and movement. At the beginning, you can hear my daughter saying “Fahrrad” — one of the first times she pronounced the rolling “R” correctly. The track starts smoothly, slowly loses balance, and then catches itself again. I’m interested in that slight tipping point where rhythms and loops almost fall apart, but still keep moving forward. Dance Under Pyrophytes This track is closely connected to the album cover. I’ve been fascinated by pyrophytes — trees that can survive or adapt to fire. In the artwork by Sydney Long, something seems to happen close to the forest floor while there’s this huge empty space above it. The image of people dancing in the woods, somewhere between nature, heat, and something unreal, became the starting point for this track. Botanicum of Trostberg Trostberg doesn’t have a botanic garden, but something still grew there. The track is heavily influenced by ambient drum and bass and late 90s sounds. That music shaped me a lot back then and felt like its own isolated space. That’s what the piece is about for me: things growing in small places, without much of a surrounding scene, but continuing to evolve anyway. Bornholm Broken Piano This track was added very late in the process. In our holiday apartment on Bornholm, there was an old piano that I sampled using the Koala Sampler. I wanted to create something simple — a broken piano loop quietly repeating itself. Bibio’s “Phantom Brickworks” was a big inspiration here. For me, it’s a calm and fitting ending to the album.