Robert Fripp talks about being “available for the music” and this was very much the case this weekend where some what unexpectedly I made a new EP of music and accompanying artwork. Normally my releases come from some initial concept or constraints but in this case I was pottering about on Saturday slightly disrupted because my teenage daughter was out and about and I needed to be available to go and collect her at a moments notice…… I’d been listening to Taylor Deupree , watching the (absolutely superb - loved the book, love the TV series) Essex Serpent and flicking through a book of Anselem Keifers work. Restless I sat down at my ‘live rig’ and pretty much recorded this EP as is.
What I think of as my ‘live rig’ is the part of my music setup I intend to use when I get around to playing live (I’m still a bit cautious about Covid to be organising anything but actually playing out is definitely on my short to medium term plans at this point.) Pleasingly I’m getting to the point where I can make music with it without a ton of preparation and patching. The music is a bit more of what you might call “modern” ambient in style than my usual stuff - although it does swell into a soundscape in the last section. I’m really pleased with it (which is unusual for me - usually I hate releases by this point and put them out so I don’t need to hear them again)
The art work was similarly “unconsidered”. The idea of flat landscapes (Essex Serpent!) somehow ended up with this curious fragment of land in a display case. The display case triggered thoughts of those “local” museums you find full of fascinating hyper-local history and random artefacts from pre-history to the inevitable impact of the industrial revolution on the local area. This led to a couple more ideas - a wooden relief map and a couple more display cases.
The display cases turned out to be beyond my current skill levels or time availability - a little wooden chapel in a display case and a 3d scan of one of my dresses in a full length case. Scanning cloth turns out to be harder than expected. Need to come back to this one.
The map turned out to be more interesting. I’d originally had in mind those clumsy hand made relief maps you might see in said museum but then I dropped the garish colours and added a bit more of the elements I might look for in landscape photography and ended up making a set of images that became the art work for the release. I also animated it a bit and made the short promotional film
The name refers to something that crosses my mind from time to time: I’m not a nostalgic person or even one who dwells on the past but like everyone else: as I’ve gotten older the collection of people who were here and are now no longer grows. We accumulate ghosts, echoes of the lives of others, remembered even now they are gone.
You can download the EP from the link above and just enter ‘0’ to download it for free! it comes with a PDF of completely different images from the ones here. (as do all my released. PDF booklets are important in digital releases)