Fluid Audio

Made by hand, Letter-pressed 4-panel oversized covers,Printed on GF Smith 540gsm embossed buckram card, Glass mastered CD, 20 x A6 microscopic prints by Ernst Haeckel (Tintoretto Gesso card), 1 x antique (circa - 1910) microscopic (handwritten) glass slide, 3 x page inserts from antique zoology books: Samuel Maunder - Treasury of Natural History Dictionary Zoology (1862), H. A. Nicholson - An Introductory Text-Book Of Zoology (1887), Parker & Haswell - Textbook of Zoology (1946), Housed in see-through anti-static bags (Sealed / stitched), Scent, Hand numbered, Download code Made with love...

You Were Always An Island opens with a downpour of rain. Staring out at its constant fall, listeners can only wait for it to stop. The music’s already waiting: for someone, and for a moment that will never arrive… Alaskan Tapes aids in the clear-up operation, helping to cleanse the air if not the growing solitude. Quiet drones and sullen strings dispel the rain, but it lingers in the streets, overflowing around the mouth of its gutter. The music has been invaded by a longing which spreads like a tendril of ink in clear water, bruising the atmosphere with its purple, sour colour. An event shakes the soul with the magnitude of an earthquake. In this case, the cruelty of distance and the greater cruelty of war which separates a couple. As a man leaves to fight, his beloved has no other choice but to wait for his return. She sends unanswered prayers. His absence grows longer with every sunset. Unable to wait and growing increasingly anxious, she sets off to look for him, a lighthouse offering a faint lifeline in the gathering gloom, only to sadly learn of his death. The separation is permanent – death us do part.

'His Many Seas' is a personal voyage, as the artist’s father was suffering from cancer at the time of the album being written. A well-travelled man, 'His Many Seas' sets sail to quietly conquer and navigate another unexplored, painful continent: the frightening landmass of coming to terms with his father’s illness, steering through the trials of life as well as acting as a dedication to his father’s love of travelling. The illness itself heralded the beginnings of a new journey. Recalling the feel of the Arctic Ocean, 'His Many Seas' thematically revolves around exploration, and the release includes vintage nautical Nories tables, Elisha Kent Kane - Arctic Exploration inserts along with 'famous explorer' double side prints. ... Made by hand, Hand made book-bound CD covers (1260 g/qm FSC certified), lined inside / outside with luxury Italian paper from Florence, glass mastered CD (not CDR), vintage nautical Nories tables (circa. 1920) resting inside old glassine bags, vintage Elisha Kane Arctic Exploration inserts (circa. 1869), a collection of 9 x double sided A6 'Hassan's Greatest Explorers' prints, dried flowers. All rests inside luxury hand cut envelopes. Individually numbered / stamped. Made with love.

Made by hand... Hand made book-bound covers (1260 g/qm FSC certified), lined inside with luxury Italian paper from Florence, sealed with washi tape, glass mastered CD (not CDR), antique glass slide (circa. 1910-1955), 5 x embryology prints, insert from antique embryology book, dried lavender, dried herbs, scent. All rests inside stitched glassine bags. Individually numbered / tagged / sealed. Made with love... Arising out of a womb-like, silent void comes Guiseppe Cordaro’s 45°12′N 72°54′E, blinking into life and exploring the cyclical lineage of a new birth, a recent ending, and the never-ending flow of life’s river. Water both sustains life and erodes it. Like the crumbling and disfigured coastlines, she either laps against the throat or chokes it, providing nourishment or eating away at the body, either satiating a deep thirst and keeping organisms alive or discovering a grisly penchant for murder in death by way of drowning. Barriers barely hold back Cordaro’s roiling waves of modular synth, a thrusting, unstoppable power rolling around in the pit of the music, capable of collapsing sounds, but also capable of reshaping their architecture.

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.