From the first steps of “Troubled Veil”, the listener is absorbed into a digital weave of field recordings, everyday undulations, other day modulations and loose harmony. Traditional instruments, string and wind, are filtered and re-imagined. The mundane echoes of routines are reborn as the percussive hum of pieces like “Stripped” and “Broken Respirator (White Funnel).” Behind the shifts and shuffles lurks something triumphal. Memories are given new form through audio carvings. Birdsong is handcrafted through knob tweaks, elephant trumpets bellow past swells of electronic insects as a glowing sun rises through the speaker. Hazes of static are shorn back, as in “Seppuku”, to allow moments of intense focus and reflection. And then we return, to that ephemeral beauty that permeates this record, with the final embrace of “Awakening Delusion.” An artist who finds the extraordinary in the often overlooked, or unheard.

Instead of looking outside, at your surroundings, it is worth going inside. You find happiness in yourself. And that happiness can only be experienced when there is balance with yourself. Happiness from within apart from expectations from the outside. It is essential to seek the silence to escape from who we think we are and experience who we really are. I like to reach out to that light. I record sound we hear every day, it is a part of life captured in it, a moment when everything happens, where everything can be heard. I focus on that because it is just there but we may have forgotten it, standing still in sound is my silence

Stay close to yourself, with love, Ard ♥

Composed and produced by Ard Janssen
Artwork & Design by Niels Vrijdag
Mastered by Stephan Mathieu (Schwebung Mastering)
Distributed by Clone Distribution

Phainomena 2022