Solace

Sunset Graves

I had this thought, and it was a thought that drifted around my mind for a long time. Would it be possible to create a really small palette of sound, that seemed limited at first glance, and write an album out of it? I don't choose when to write a record, it chooses me. And when I felt this one coming on, I knew that it needed to be nothing like any of my previous work. Things had changed, and my music needed to reflect that. So I started to layout my tools.. a small group of synth sounds, drums hits, samples and field recordings. The only rule was that I would use these, and only these.. but I could process and effect them in any way I could discover. And so I began to write.

I wanted to find detail by smashing drum elements into grains and coercing them back into shapes and patterns. I wanted to create texture by applying filters and stacks of eq and reverb to synths, to change their colour. I wanted to give the album depth and life by recording sounds of the environment around me. The first drums you hear on 'Lovr' are an iPhone recording of me tapping the steel girder of a railway bridge I was stood on. The road that never sleeps outside my home is the bed on which 'Solace' lies.

By processing, stretching, crushing and pushing, finding elements and artifacts and using them as new starting points, an eco system of sound began to form, and the album exists within that. However, with all the layers and rhythms I could bring, I wanted the album to have a heart, and resonate emotionally. And I wanted it to sound huge.

In the 'nothing matters anyway' world of 2017, in a post break up new home, at a point I was finding the shape of the next phase of my life, 'The Inevitable End' wasn't me painting over the cracks, but instead embracing them and making something that felt beautiful out of all the imperfections I could encounter.