Deluxe

Made by hand... Letter-pressed covers Printed on GF Smith 540gsm embossed buckram card Glass mastered CD 20 x photos printed on Fujicolor crystal archive paper, 6 x double sided A7 vintage prints that include track title / poetry 1 x page insert from antique psychology books Housed in glassine bags (Sealed / stitched) Scent Hand numbered Download code Mastering by James Plotkin Made with love...

Made by hand... 10 unique book-bound cover variations (1260 g/qm FSC certified), lined inside / outside with luxury Italian paper from Florence, sealed with washi tape, glass mastered CD (not CDR), vintage glass slide (circa. 1890-1950), vintage botanical print, dried flower, scent. All rests inside luxury hand cut envelopes. Individually numbered / sealed. Made with love...

The Epiphanies sees Bill Seaman in fine fettle, driving along phosphorescent-lit roads marked by the heavy dew of mystery and slow-to-develop intrigue. Delayed secrets are now only coming to light. The setting sun is the glorious backdrop as The Epiphanies coasts along a deserted road, its dark road-trip music glinting like the lightless, metallic chrome of the car’s body. A pack of coyotes come out to play, and further down the road some lusty, post-jazz musings at a local bar hint at dark dislocations. Nothing is right – the neon sign is too bright and things are a little off-kilter. Reality slips slowly away, like water through the fingers, drained as if from the last bottle of whiskey, until it can’t be grasped at any longer. The sick, cloying perfume of cigarette smoke hangs in the air like a tired apparition. The lingering, too-wide smile of a cute bartender with a string of strange tattoos along her back and an old episode of Tiny Toon Adventures (circa 1990) rather than the latest game from the NHL graces the television’s pulpit, adding to the subtle sense of dislocation, and the music only gets darker, its dying light duelling with the fading sunset. The headlights are a lonely splash of colour at two in the morning, and as the music enters the long hours a velvet-smooth carpet of asphalt spreads out before the listener, the unfolding ambient textures helping to shape a smooth, virgin-pure road. Dark wet trees and swaying branches are illuminated as the car drives through an eerie, sleeping town, with nothing but a slumping, somnambulant piano strolling up and down the dark, leaf-strewn sidewalk. Distant notes seem to croon into the space, somehow filtering in through the dead radio that needed replacing months ago, luring you into its monochromatic musical world. You are the first visitor. You are also the last. There isn’t any other traffic…

You can’t predict the weather. Sometimes, life throws something at you. When it does – not if but when - hopes and expectations lie like shattered spokes. Is it fate, destiny, or circumstance? No one knows, but paths can change when there’s a sudden shift in the weather, and something that once seemed so sure and stable starts to become the opposite: uncertain and unfair. Promises peter out as a drop of rain appears. You have to stop and change course. A natural disaster plunges normality into desolation, and the same is true of our longed-for futures which so often disappear into the ether. Disappointment ensures: inclement weather. You can’t prepare for it; the hurricane warning arrived too late. Steven Kemner recently went through such a change: “I needed to move away from everything that I loved to a place I had no desire to go. This change complicated music, life and a sense of belonging”. - Steven Kemner Like the changing of the weather, ironclad clouds can appear from out of nowhere, eclipsing the sun with blackened totality, and the deep, roiling textures within the music of Gradation Movements are full of rain and turmoil, of leaving and moving on. The slow swells and hard-fought movements are indicative of clouded spells which obdurately block out the blue hope of the sky like a cruel shield. Coated in sleek silver, the notes shadow the steps of the people below. Rainy season stalks the soul; it doesn’t seem to matter where the notes walk, because the cloud always follows, indiscriminate with its downpours of rain and its trident spears of lightning. Rainfall is needed in order to grow, and that includes us. The rainy spells can make us stronger, helping us to rise up in troubling times…but too much of it, and we drown. The cirrus patterns and the cycling of the wind may be hard to understand – we may never understand – but they still have a purpose. The purpose may seem obscure, but it’s there. There’s a strong energy at work within them, and troubled times often reveal things that, in hindsight, we later come to appreciate. When sunlight fails, the music’s tones lie hidden in a shroud of slow mist. The clouds don’t always disperse. You can’t predict the future - you just have to roll with it until you finally come to terms with the strange weather.