I started making this album at one of the darkest points of my life. Halfway through its creation, the experiences and memories I wrote about occurred again, a mirror image in reality to the thoughts I couldn't get out of my head while writing this. Hiraeth is an album about a story bifurcated, a moment becoming a pattern and a pattern ruling my mind.
I began writing when I was 17, and ended closely after my 19th birthday. Hiraeth is a welsh word with many meanings, none of which easily translatable into English, but vaguely meaning "a homesickness for a home you cannot return to, or that never was." Laying in bed, after two of the communities I cherished most were destroyed, due in no small part to my own actions, I felt a connection to this idea unlike I had in a very long time.
This is an album about connection, loss, betrayal, innocence, immaturity, and most of all, grief. In December of 2020, I wrote 7 30 second demos in a burst of creativity that I had not felt before or since, and all of which I slowly tooled into tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 9. This album, so grounded in these themes was the first time I had been able to put every idea I had into sound flawlessly. I wrote so many of these songs in a place of pure distress and unwellness, but as I came closer to finishing, it became harder to maintain the themes of nearly pure desperation I entered with.
I realized I had started becoming happy. That I was moving on, and that this was a step in my life that I had already moved past. When the second community crumbled, I was more distraught than before. I added new songs, and sunk deeper into a pit of self-hatred and isolation to finish this project. But joy prevailed. There are two moments a metronome is used on this album. "If I Apologize", the first song finished after the second community crumbled, and "Only A Moment", the first song finished after I realized I was okay. I look back, and realize as well as these themes, Hiraeth is an album about perseverance. An album about pulling through the hardest parts of my childhood and coming out the other side happy. Hiraeth is an album about love. I hope you find that as well.
lyrics
[Verse]
I walk, as the sun is beaming down
To a tree extending branches full of sap and blooming flowers
It's all I ever asked
But its everything I always wanted
Just the pieces rearranged
Small cracks filled in with epoxy its only a moment until-
Hey, I'm Asher, or Mailto. I make music I guess. I like pretending to be a human on the internet. When I turn off the computer I leave and go be a coyote in the wild. The life.
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