Rendering the experience of being is at the core of what I do musically. This album is about capturing our shared experience.
It began when I started reading the database of thoughts I had been collecting over the past few years from the question "what do you want to express which you feel you can't in everyday life?".
It was like finding a secret window into our collective psyche, and discovering amongst the chaos, pleasure and pain, so many experiences that we share at different times of our lives, and an overwhelming sense of emotions and connections that I had to explore.
Usually I render my own thoughts and feelings and find out later whether they resonate with others or not. Now I could start from the resonant thoughts at source, and make my own interpretations of those musically and visually. It was intense. The quotes carry so much weight. Individually they are extreme, but as a whole collection I found it quite overwhelming. I tried to channel that through into the music, so we have something more intense than my usual, particularly for the moments when I tackled the most brutal of the quotes.
Big thanks to all of you who contributed to this project, the whole database of quotes will also be featured in installation and visual projects linked to the album, with real time additions as the collection of our shared experience grows. And if you wrote any of the quotes I’d love to hear from you so I can put a face to the words I’ve spent my last few years with.