Jonathan Ogden

Jonathan Ogden characterizes his lush pop songs as “prayers set to music,” merging explorations of Christian faith with a dreamy bedroom aesthetic that folds in understated hip-hop and electronic textures. Located in the Manchester area of North West England, he launched the worship band Rivers & Robots in 2010 and tracked five albums with the group across the following decade. Beginning in 2016 he also put out a series of solo EPs, culminating in the beat tape Twenty Four (2020). When Rivers & Robots entered hiatus in early 2021, Ogden promptly issued the EP Songs from Home, then unveiled his debut album Future Forever in 2022 and the EP Take Me Back in December 2023.

He formed Rivers & Robots in Salford, Greater Manchester, at age seventeen. Conceived at first as a solo vehicle for his interest in Christian worship music, the project soon expanded into a four-piece ensemble. The band’s debut album The Great Light appeared in 2011, followed by Take Everything (2012), a self-titled EP (2013), and the third album All Things New (2014). After several personnel shifts, the group delivered The Eternal Son (2016) and Discovery (2018), with Ogden overseeing vocals, multiple instruments, songwriting, production, and design throughout.

Even as Rivers & Robots searched for new members, Ogden began issuing solo work under his own name, opening with the EP By the Streams in January 2016 and continuing with the seasonal sequence Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn, issued from February 2017 to January 2018. In 2019 he released the solo singles “Something Real” and “Slow Down”; in January 2020 he presented the beat tape Twenty Four, whose twenty-four tracks mirror the hours of a day. Later that year he offered the solo pieces “Laid Down Lover” and “Always on My Mind,” the latter a collaboration with Joe Bae.

Following the band’s official hiatus announcement at the start of 2021, Ogden concentrated on his solo output, releasing the EP Songs from Home in April 2021 and his first full-length album Future Forever in October 2022. In December 2023 he returned with the stripped-back EP Take Me Back.