LIKE FIGHTING A SPECTER took a lot out of me. My computer died completely shortly after the release of Overgrowth and for the first time in 7 years, I did not have any familiar means of writing and releasing music. I always thought that if I lost my ability to create music for any reason that I would just pick up a new medium and dig into it with as much fervor as I have with production. Apparently that is not the case. I tried a few new methods of artmaking but lost interest quickly after I began them. Turns out nothing scratches the itch like music and in the months without it, I felt like a large part of my ability to fully process my experiences and engage with such a dominant passion in my life was absent.

When I was finally able to buy a new computer and begin producing again, the creative process felt awkward and unfamiliar. I had access to a shiny new UI and all of the tools that came with it but everything I made felt so lackluster. I spent days working on tracks where I usually spent hours and grew more and more angry at my art. Not only was I barely able to make complete songs but what finished ideas I was able to eke out didn't even feel cathartic anymore. Sometimes I felt like I was trying way too hard and others not nearly enough. For a while there I felt like I had lost my touch completely. Like my ability to make anything that really dug to the root of my experiences had left me.

But I kept hacking at it, deconstructing and rebuilding over and over hoping that in the tens of iterations I was making of single tracks, one would finally click. I absolutely needed to make something out of the hopelessly complicated feelings I have towards the drastic shifts in or outright loss of relationships as I came out last year alongside my increasing fear, rage, and sadness seeing more trans rights stripped away bill by bill as anti-queer rhetoric continues to proliferate wildly. More months went by with nothing to show for it until finally, in a state of burning-like-hellfire exhaustion, LASH finally came into being as it is on the album. It set the tone for how I would go forward fleshing out this project: intense frustration, ceaseless effort and failure to capture it in sound, cathartic breakthrough, and finally, some kind of peace.

However laborious, I am incredibly proud of what I was able to create. This project, like every one that came before it in the last year, feels like another big development in my ability as a producer. My sound has evolved into something more vividly expressive than I could have imagined I was capable of when I started and I am slowly learning to embrace life's inherent instability, honing it into pieces that feel viscerally in tune with my emotions. Art is not a substitute for dealing with pain but it does make my experiences feel more purposeful. At the end of the day, sharing pieces of my life and self through art - however agonizingly vulnerable - makes me feel less alone. I hope this album can do the same for whoever finds it.

Much love,
Rinne