Net – HS

Each highly limited collectable Whitelabrecs release is built around a set format as follows: 50 x vinyl-effect CDrs with card vinyl-style sleeves, rubber stamped titling and a polaroid print of the cover.

HS is an album full of gentle granular textures that weighs in generously at 55 minutes and is pristinely mastered by Fraser McGowan, who suggested that Edward approached Whitelabrecs as a home for the project. HS is a sort of spiritual successor to RS which was released in 2012, with both records being dedications to Edward’s maternal grandparents. In fact, opening track ‘Ptarmigan’ includes a sample of his grandmother singing back in the 1940s.
Aside from this, HS is free from a set concept as the net traps and envelopes many of Edward’s unrelated experiences and ideas during the album’s creation: ‘Plaza’ was inspired by the overwhelming metropolis of the planet Trantor in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. ‘Werel’ is an attempt to capture the beauty, stillness and vast, textured summer evening skies of the Rauhaniemi beach in Tampere. In the summer of 2014, several days before the birth of their son, Edward and his wife Annika chanced upon a nestling bird helpless on the pavement in an old red-brick industrial area of Tampere. Unsure from where it had fallen, they took it in and kept it fed overnight. The next day, they located the nest in the wall and returned the chick safely. This bird is the fellow that can be heard chirping in ‘Nestling’.