Arborist, the project of Belfast songwriter Mark McCambridge, has shared a video for new single Looking 4 Love, alongside a run of UK and Irish tour dates for spring 2026. The track trails a forthcoming fourth album, also titled Looking For Love, due later in the year.
Love’s absence drives the song, which moves through Belfast’s darker corners — “I wouldn’t want to be looking for love in…” McCambridge sings of each in turn. Arpeggio harp and a piano motif borrowed from Jacques Brel’s 1961 song Marieke puncture a taut, straight rhythm and droning harmonium. There is menace in the atmosphere, but McCambridge offers a hand to guide the listener through it, in the vein of LCD Soundsystem’s New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down, Tom Waits’ Town With No Cheer or Apollinaire’s Le Pont Mirabeau. Close-mic’ed and intimate, the sound calls to mind Songs: Ohia’s Magnolia Electric Co., The Divine Comedy’s Regeneration, The Blue Nile’s Hats and Wilco’s Ode to Joy, as well as early-70s records from John Cale, John Lennon and Bill Fay.
The accompanying video was shot in a Belfast Holiday Inn over one night in July 2025 by Tristan Crowe — who previously shot the live performance film for A Northern View — with additional animations by Stephen Brogan. No AI or green-screen was used (something that’s great to hear).
“I tried to abandon the guitar for this one,” McCambridge says. “I wanted the sound of late evenings in Belfast – when the City Centre shops close it can feel like a ghost town in certain areas. But I love the place, the song is not intended to be pejorative, but rather an ode of sorts.”
McCambridge produced the track himself, splitting recording between The Meadow Studios in County Wicklow and his Belfast home studio. The session draws on Spacebomb bassist Cameron Ralston (Bonnie Light Horseman, Hiss Golden Messenger), Eamon Ferris (The Waterboys) on drums, Grainne Meyer on harp and Aga Olek on violin, with Ben McAuley (Van Morrison) engineering and Jimmy Robertson (Anna Calvi, Beth Gibbons, Fat Dog) on the mix.
Stream ‘Looking 4 Love’: https://cargo-independent.ffm.to/fj9agsrc5i
Live Dates:
30/04/2026 – BELFAST, The Harrison
01/05/2026 – BELFAST, The Harrison
03/05/2026 – HEBDEN BRIDGE, The Trades Club
04/05/2026 – ILKLEY, Ilkley Moor Vaults
05/05/2026 – DARLINGTON, Angel’s Cut
06/05/2026 – NORTH SHIELDS, The Engine Room
08/05/2026 – EAST NEUK, FIFE, Futtle Brewery
09/05/2026 – DUNDEE, Futtle Bar
The single follows 2023’s An Endless Sequence of Dead Zeros, recorded at Spacebomb Studios in Richmond, Virginia with Matthew E White, which won the Northern Ireland Music Prize. McCambridge was recently honoured with a Fellowship by the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University Belfast, alongside author Caoilinn Hughes and playwright Conor McPherson.