"Quiet Rooms" is the fifth release of Polaroid Notes on UK label Whitelabrecs.
About the album:
"Quiet Rooms" came about during a strange phase of deliberate and involuntary personal changes and attempts to refocus. Moving back home after nearly eight years of working far away and dealing with one of the most annoying things a musician can experience; tinnitus.
"Quiet Rooms" was therefore initially a kind of self-healing process to get back onto a decent track with music, focusing on slow-burning, minimalist piano lines, gentle melodies and lots of space in between the individual notes. The tracks "Quiet Rooms" and "Two Wrongs Won’t Make It Right" were the first pieces to be recorded and these set the direction for what was to come in the rest of the album.
Everything was improvised and recorded at a time when it felt right. One particular idea was to keep the tracks as transparent as possible, so that light and atmosphere could shine through as if through a piece of gauze. Later, electric piano, reversed loops and some additional electronic and field recording sounds were added. And that’s it. The music is focused, dense and uplifting in its quest for deep contemplation. It instills a sense of serenity with a gently absorbing, balanced stillness.
All recordings were made in the evening and at night, with the lights dimmed while the cat slept gently next to the recording equipment. The individual titles of the twelve tracks reflect the mood and hope in which the album was created. What you hear on the album is a carefully curated extract from several hours of recordings. The photos that can be seen across the four gatefold sleeves of the packaging were staged presentations of quiet rooms inside the artist’s home. For us the listener, they serve as fictitious environments to place ourselves, in which to escape into a quiet space.
Tracklist:
1. Quiet Rooms / 2. Two Wrongs Won't Make It Right / 3. The World Outside Disappears / 4. The Night Returns Without A Sound / 5. Frigid Stars / 6. Dust To Dust / 7. Be There Forever / 8. Lunar Melancholy / 9. I Can Hear You In The Wind / 10. Advanced Study For A Lullaby / 11. Invitation To A Ghost Seance / 12. Nighthawks
Written and produced by Polaroid Notes
Mastered by James Edward Armstrong
Photography by Polaroid Notes
Art and design by Andrew Heath
Limited Edition CD and digital download @ https://polaroidnotes.bandcamp.com/album/quiet-rooms
Release date: September 21, 2024
Whitelabrecs wlr 169
