and then there was nothing, by Ian Hawgood

and then there was nothing

by Ian Hawgood

supported by

Roland Pyle Thank you for a lovely album. Very best wishes to you.

PadraigC So calming and comforting, a gorgeous release especially given the context in which it was made!
Thank you for this.

Will Thank you Ian for this sublime and beautiful work.
The world is a better place for having you in it.
Keep doing what you do.

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REPRESS DUE JUNE 2024

Limited Edition CD with full colour 230g innersleeve inside 270g two panel matte pack outersleeve featuring photography by Stijn Hüwels.

Includes unlimited streaming of and then there was nothing via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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1.	Movement I 07:46	buy track
2.	Movement II 05:05	buy track
3.	Movement III 04:26	buy track
4.	Movement IV 03:39	buy track
5.	Movement V 04:44	buy track
6.	Movement VI 04:11	buy track
7.	Movement VII 03:43	buy track
8.	Movement VIII 04:58	buy track
9.	Movement IX 06:23	buy track
10.	Movement X 03:51	buy track
11.	Movement XI 03:18	buy track

about

'and then there was nothing' is the partner album to 'where i go you cannot follow'.

In December 2022 I had a PTSD incident that left me with a series of panic attacks and an inability to speak clearly. I'd been suffering from long Covid and severe stress after a series of deaths of loved ones in a short space of time, including our dear old dog. He had been by our side throughout so many life events, miraculously surviving the Tohoku earthquake when our entire house had been badly damaged, moving from Japan to England, England to Poland and back again. He was our rock and anchor in all the craziness and stress of cultural shifting and change.

The day we had to take him to the vet to say goodbye after a sudden onset of seizures I'd had to have blood tests due to not feeling well for over a month due to Covid. As I carried him in I knew something wasn't right for me, with enormous pain down my left side, and we said a deeply tearful goodbye.

The next month was spent working, trying to get over the sadness of the loss of so many close to myself and my wife, with a Christmas spent with family where I excused myself from anything involving my memory or speaking much, with them believing I was simply exhausted from stress. The truth was I had spent that month in the deepest depression of my life, thinking of ways to take my life that would be kinder on everyone.

In January I did attempt to take my life. This isn't an easy thing to write but it is important to address and be clear about. I was saved with my wife and close friends (and neighbours) returning from work early that day and discovering me unconscious. They saved my life, and with the National Health Service's amazing doctors, nurses and ambulance workers, made sure I didn't say goodbye quite yet. I'm now glad they did, but did spend weeks upset about this.

Acute stress had caused me to suffer a stroke which led to depression, memory loss, and many issues regarding my day to day activities. It had turned me completely, as if each day I was a wraith, not of this earth or with any desire to be. It has taken six months of support, medicine, testing, rest and counselling to start the long process of recovery. Six months later and my left side is back in use as the crutch I had to use is gone. I have lost partial hearing in my left ear, and am having to work hard to play guitar and piano again with continued weakness to my left hand. Despite the embarrassment I feel around neighbours, I am able to communicate even if a little slower, a little more forgetfully than before, but I'm finally present again. And that counts.

'where i go you cannot follow' is both a love letter and a goodbye letter to my wife. A suicide note after the survival if you will, to say that though I was ready to leave this mortal being behind, my love for her is eternal despite this. It’s a reflection on the beauty of being home together, and how, even despite myself, nothing else matters. Even as the blossom of life fades or blows away, the beauty of the quiet growth and peace at home even for a just short period is life itself, and the album is a note of sincere gratitude for this.

'and then there was nothing' is a reflection on the moment when I was slowly fading after overdosing. I felt a sense of deep peace that there is so much beauty in the world, and I was completely thankful to have experienced it for the time I had. I had taken myself out of the world and could feel that there was so much beauty and none of it revolved around or included me. I was left as an observer with my memories slowing down to a near halt but thankful for all that had come before. This wasn't a sad goodbye from my personal perspective.

In the moments before I was jolted back I heard white noise, despite everything being dulled, and I felt as if I was floating in water. As I faded I was deeply aware of my thoughts of floating and being one with the water, in a very abstract way. I was shaken out of a genuine sense of weightlessness and into consciousness. It is that moment when we are nothing that I wanted to reflect on with gratitude for the moment, as hard as that is to say, but also gratitude that I could be here now, able to reflect on this rather than simply slipping away from this physical being.

Both albums are a reflection on the perfection of fleeting moments of quietude as an observer, when life has faded away from a mental and then nearly a physical stand-point too. Both albums are a reflection of love and beauty in their purest form, without self, intention and control. These are love letters of peace; before, during and after the hardest and most traumatic of personal times. Life carries on without us, and that is a beautiful thing. In the understanding that who we are is just a brief fleeting moment in time and space, I have gained a sense of peace in which to float a little longer as an observer with a physical presence for now. And I'm thankful for that, with each day as it comes.

Finally some technical notes. ’and then there was nothing’ contains a series of movements based around two patches with slight modulations and adjustments. I recorded these loops many years ago and revisited them last year by looping elements through two original Akai Headrush looper pedals, each with a maximum 14 second loop time, and playing simple notes over the top.

These went into an RE-201 Space Echo for the washed out blur, harmonic distortion and light frequency adjustments, into my old X-18 multitrack tape recorder for stereo panning then into a modded Revox A77 for final mix and pitch adjustments.

All this was done live as I tried different field recordings, processed using the EQ on a 424 Portastudio tape recorder. The EQ on these machines is wonderfully brittle yet warm, helping to create a bed of white noise elements to many of the pieces that fits the theme of the completed work. Each piece contains slight variations but with differing textures of white noise through to water, these being the focus with the melodies submerged somewhat, as if they’re memories or dreams rising and fading as physical reality takes over.

I rarely write about the different technical backgrounds to my recordings, but this particular album is so deeply personal and it took me back to recordings and equipment I grew up with and really learned my craft on over the past twenty years. Coming back to them has been like coming home.

These two albums have been packaged in the same way with gorgeous Polaroid images from Stijn Hüwels, designed by myself, with the aid of Jason van Wyk, to be as minimal as possible with no credits on the package beyond the title down the spine of each.

Thank you, with love, Ian

** If anyone is impacted by these words please contact Samaritans on 116 123 if in the UK or visit www.samaritans.org **

There is help, support and love out there, even in the darkest of times. You are not alone in your feelings and thoughts. x

credits

released June 9, 2023

All music written and produced by Ian Hawgood

Photography by Stijn Hüwels

**For the full album mix please message through Bandcamp. Thanks.**

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Home Normal Brighton And Hove, UK

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Hello

We release organic ambient music. We are fifteen years old this year.

Currently based in Brighton (UK), we were founded in Tokyo (JP) where most of our music can be bought in small physical editions.

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Physical:

* Objects and Sounds (BE)

* Norman Records (UK)

* P*Dis (JP)

* Linus Records (JP) ... more

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