An exploration of energy, the closed system, how small amounts of energy can have giant effects on our world and where does it all go?

It can only change

The genesis of the project was when I was about to have a call with a director friend of mine, Ely Dagher, who was in Beirut at the time (he's Lebanese), he messaged me and said he was running a few minutes late as his meeting was over running, all good of course. A few minutes later I received a distressed voice message, alarms, debris, smashes, sirens, screaming. In shock in the back room of my house (COVID wfh) I quickly googled ‘Beruit’, ‘Lebanon’, ‘attack’, ‘bomb’ and… nothing, there was nothing about it 5-10 minutes. Staring out of my back window in London at the completely normal inner city suburban view, I was in a bit of shock.

He and his partner were caught in the Beirut harbor explosion. Through the guilt and confusion of my privileged distant shock I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole. I started to think about what happened to all those people, the tragedy, the’ one second they’re there the next they’re not’, where did they go, where did their energy go? Then literally, where will it end up in the system, where did it come from, where will it go? No doubt a kind of coping mechanism or search for a connection, I couldn't do anything, what could I do? Donate? Flyover and help? Nothing seemed enough. This abstract train of thought lived with me for a while and made me think a lot deeper about the experience, feeling empathy for the people caught up in it, who didn’t deserve it, the injustice and frustration of it all.

This then moved me to thinking about other tragic experiences in a similar way, like George Floyd's death, Grenfell Tower fire and exploring the seemingly frivolous decisions and actions of people that caused these massive human and emotional moments and reactions. Throughout all this I was writing music and this naturally came embroiled in that expression and emotion. Where do I put the emotion and feelings from these events? Into something I can hear or feel I guess.

Sonically the album feels like I'm building from the solo minimal piano pieces in Paint & Dance. Acoustic and effects, to acoustic and synths, to synths and acoustics to synths. Starting with the cyclical delayed piano of OUT that introduces the synth palette of the album, the shimmering fizzy octave delays in Brightly With Flashes Of Light and moving all the way through to the huge fluid synth and textural walls of We All Fall, Sudden and Uphill.