Abstract

Solastalgia refers to a particular type of environmental distress, a feeling of grief for what we are losing from the world, and an odd kind of nostalgia for what we still have, but are going to lose.

As I was starting this process, I was reading Edward Abbey, lamenting the loss of wild places to industry and commerce. He speaks of a ‘brutal mysticism’, in which he would lose himself in the desert and face dehydration and exposure to really try to viscerally experience nature and wildness whilst we still have it. He describes the Anasazi people living free on the land, and the sorrow he feels as he kayaks Glen Canyon for the last time before the Colorado river is dammed and the world within the canyon is flooded and lost forever. It is, in microcosm, what is happening at present to the whole Earth.

I believe in the responsibility of art to reflect the zeitgeist and address contemporary issues, and it is for that purpose that I use my platform as a musician.

This is a collection of songs exploring how music can mean without lyrics; a solo project addressing contemporary themes and intended to contribute to discourse, a reaction, a statement and a manifesto in sound.

As with previous works, it explores notions of physical place and its connection to recorded music.