A Chain Reaction of Various Cracks (2CD set)

Two hand-stamped 3" CD-rs. Art printed on heavy card stock and enclosed in a vinyl pouch with a flap. Hand-numbered.

Released 11th November, 2022 on Inner Demons Records

I first finished the initial tracks for ACRoVC on March 15th, 2020. The following day, I started working from job as the first nationwide lockdown was introduced due to the pandemic, and the world went to Hell.

The timing is odd: here I was, trying to create an album that would evoke the sense of breakdown, of things spiralling out of control, a persistent grinding of one’s mental landscape. Meantime, global circumstances were conspiring to create that experience for millions, if not billions, across the world.

A lot of my work is influenced by the idea of trying to soundtrack mental illness: what does depression sound like? Given expression, what noise would anxiety make? I’m interested in established patterns and structures breaking down, the drift from tonal to atonal, from rhythm to arrhythmia. And appropriately enough, everyone would soon start to drift away from established societal norms towards ‘the new normal’, enforced onto us by coronavirus.

It's curious then that I had to wait until the pandemic had settled, until there was a sense of being back in control, before I could revisit and finish the album. Sometimes, understanding only comes with distance. ACRoVC was created during a frenzy of activity, forging forty to fifty hours of sounds across the previous twelve months. It was a minor obsession (if indeed, any obsession can be minor), a new plaything that could not be exhausted. And while the limits of sounds are inexhaustible, I was not.

It was only in the summer of 2022, over two years removed from the original experience, that the mood felt right to brush off the digital dust from the album, reopen the files, and delve back into that headspace. In order was one to openly talk and address mental health issues, one must be a secure position – otherwise, they risk things breaking down again, the mere act of addressing an issue akin to exposing the vulnerabilities behind experiencing the issue. However, if sound is a comforter, ambient sound a deviation, a curveball, a welcomed holiday. It felt good to revel in the mire again, after the world surviving its own depression: we are reasonable safe, and once again, we can freely talk about our danger.