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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.