Why “Forgotten Fields”

I have always been a loner. For many reasons, I have felt forgotten by my family. Early on, solitude became my friend. I escaped into the worlds of Dirk Bogarde (A Postillion Struck by Lightning), Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows) and Marcel Pagnol (La Gloire de Mon Père). I used to picture abandoned fields, just beyond the hedgerows, dotted with flowers like an impressionist painting. They gave me a sense of comfort. I escaped to them to be alone with my thoughts. I imagined myself lying in the tall grass, gently whispering in the wind. I stare at the clouds, my mind finally quiet. No one will find me because no one comes to these fields. Here, I am not afraid, everything is as it should be, all is right with the world. The name “Forgotten Fields” describes this inner life, the feelings of nostalgia and melancholy. It captures the yearning for something idyllic lost and even forgotten, a place that must be returned to some day, but may never be found again.

The music of existentialism

This sense of abandonment has been a theme of my existence for as long as I can remember; and my life has been an unending crusade against the mental chaos that followed. In an attempt to impose order on the chaos, I indulge my methodical, exacting nature. I am constantly trying to bring order out of the confusion about who I am, what I want and what I need. I regulate my own behaviour in order to extract something beautiful out of the noise that is my life. Predictably, this existential crisis finds expression in my work. In my music, droning noise and—to borrow from descriptions of the shoegaze movement—“walls of sound” represent chaos. Using repeating themes, sounds and melodies, I try to transform the noise into something structured, ordered and, I hope, beautiful. The ambient post-rock/drone genre provides an ideal medium for this. It is dark and pensive to quiet the mind, but also provides a medium with which to tell stories. The stories can be haunting and tragic or inspiring and rhapsodic. I endeavour to tell both. “Airship” is my first official attempt at doing so.

Forgotten Fields