J Butler – Memory

Memory is that most elusive thing, so certain at a distance, but once examined up close full of holes and doubt. Memories fade, change, are re-written, morph and elide. At once ungraspable, unknowable and always out of reach they are also an essential part of each of us, and the basis of life as we know it.

In Musicophilia: Tales of music and the brain, neurologist and author Oliver Sacks writes: “Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.”

This album with its delicate twists and turns, its unexpected returns and re-workings is J Butler’s meditation on the ways we remember. From the slow unfolding of Float, to the hazy repetitions of the title track and the insistent tug of Ephemera this is an album which you won’t forget.