My new album Waterlog was released Feb 9 on the brand new Nite Hive imprint. Waterlog is the second release, after the gorgeous premiere release Heavenly Spheres by label founder Penelope Trappes. It’s been truly lovely to receive your kind feedback and warm messages about my album. Wonderful to feel so supported by Nite Hive and to be part of a community that has a strong emphasis on exploration in experimental music for women and gender expansive artists.
Waterlog was dedicated my sweet little cat Luis who passed last year. As I hear the songs again, and talk about the album, I feel another wave of grief washing over me. It’s neither good, nor bad. It is simply to be felt. Talking about in my own way helps to move me through it. The darker, harder feelings can co-exist with the lighter, more positive ones. It’s still hard to lookat photographs of him without losing it, but I am putting a selection of them below.

The act of making my music is strongly linked with my cat Luis aka furry assistant number one. During the past seven plus years he was stationed at my desk while I recorded, edit and mixed my music. He’d often be asleep in his little bed or looking for pats. I felt so saddened by his absence as I sat down to make this album. Still aching with the grief of his passing and struggling to accept it. This is how the album came to be about him. My grief dominated the improvisation sessions and came through strong and steady. Luis always loved to be the centre of attention, and so it felt like he was making sure of that again!

While making this album, I’d often be drenched in tears. I tried my hardest to transcend the grief. Tried to imagine him floating about in outer space on his little cushion. Or, in a spiritual, light-filled place shrouded in a stylish cloak and looking like baby yoda. That somehow brought me peace and helped me start to make sense of it all. While making Waterlog I kept returning to the comforting, softer moments when I’d whisper sweet nothings to him. Those tones are where the tenderness is and where I feel him the most. I am now ready to share a bit more about the songs on this album, and expand on the making of this improvised work. I’ll take you through it track by track with links to listen along on Bandcamp.

Rolling Tears is the opening track and it was made in the midst of a long, intense cry I had when starting this album. I remember thinking at the time that I would get the tears out and then I’d feel better and could get on with making this album. As though giving my permission to feel all the feelings in that improvisation session for this song would clean them all out. However, the tears never really stopped, and the album ended up being precisely about that!
Of course I knew Luis was not here, but I felt it so deeply at that moment as I sat with my gear and was poised to record. There was now an umfamiliar emptiness to that place on my desk that he used to occupy. I missed reaching out to touch him and feel his loving eyes gaze back at me. His warm, black fur-covered body was not here anymore. It would take a big adjustment on my behalf to get used to that.
I am singing a wordless melody that expresses everything I feel in that moment. I don’t hold back. I open my throat and I feel my heart beating in it. I loop the part at times and add layers as I build on the melody. This track feels very much the sound of my tears in that moment. Tears of anguish, despair, grief and love – so much love as I recall how loved I felt when Luis was here.

The One That I Love is essentially a love song for Luis. It is the only track where I use another instrument other than my voice. You can hear gentle drones on guitar as I was playing around with the unearthed electricity sounds of my apartment crackling through the guitar. I was most likely imagining, hoping, that he was coming through. Or at least wishing he could hear. I constantly told him how handsome he was and how much I loved him. He would slow blink back to me. He knew he was loved, and was such a velcro cat who wanted and needed to be loved. He looked for that reassurance and felt comforted by it. Never tiring from being patted.
I moved between saying “the one that I love” and “the world I love”. Oh, how I loved that little world we were in together while he was at my side. I miss making up funny little love songs just for him and seeing his face, and his beautifully shaped light green eyes glow when I sang to him. This feels like one of those songs he would drift off to sleep to…

Weighted started off for me as a heaviness felt. I’m circling around the words “a weight(ed) in/on me”. Playing with waited and awaited too. The weight of grief can hold you down, stop you in your tracks and distort time. I hear how I am resigning myself to it as my repeated vocal moves from a deep reverb and then surfaces to where it’s dry and the reverb has been gradually removed. I catch, and loop, a piece of my vocal. I feel anger build as I repeat and add layers to each loop. It comes hurtling out of my throat as I continue my catch/loop/layer process with my vocals. I attempt to diffuse the anger and intensity by manually adjusting settings and filters on my pedals as I am making this in real time. Volume increases and I can’t control it. I feel stuck. I want it to stop. It’s like a ride that I can’t get off . So I have to  jump off to abruptly end it.
Electronic music/culture newsletter First Floor highlighted this track in their recent newsletter here. Saying that my song “taps into something both immediate and undeniably human, her sorrow intertwined with the sheets of reverb she’s draped atop her heart-wrenching compositions. “Weighted” might be the most sparse track of the bunch, but it feels like a gripping funeral lament—that is, until she begins looping her voice about halfway through and gradually warps it to oblivion. It’s potent stuff.”

Wails to Whispers is a mixture of feelings all swirling around me, but never quite settling. It feels like a crossroad moment where I could go either way. I feel the different tones and textures of my grief in this vocal only track. The soft, the rough, the light, the dark, the loud and the restrained. I am singing high and there is a siren-like sound. I can’t remember if I had heard an ambulance go past, but I am reminded of that kind of pitching of a siren and I got stuck in a moment of looping myself as I was singing it. Sometimes I’ll get into my own loop and I just want to be held there for a while. Let myself stay there and spin around. You are essentially creating your own little universe in those moments. Spinning your own cocoon. By the end I feel like I have had enough of feeling everything all at once. I’m not ever really settling on any emotion in particular. I feel detached and isolated from myself. Eventually I bounce out into the aether. Scatter myself among the stars in an attempt to find the meaning in it all.

We Coalesce is me trying to acquaint myself with Luis not being here. I can hear how I’m attempting to navigate my way through this new reality without him. Trying to integrate this new way of being with Luis in my mind. You have all these memories left and you create your own strange little virtual world that is made up of half-remembered moments. I am pondering where he is and again thinking about him flying about in space. I do like the funny little images of cats in space. I’m wondering if he’s cold up there and wanting to tuck him up in his little blankie, but realizing that I really have absolutely no idea where he is. I am just projecting. I only have my imagination and my memories of our time together.
This track is made with only vocals. I process them heavily through pedals and use a microcosm pedal quite a bit here. While singing, I was manipulating the sounds live into the microcosm. I like that the voice sounded quite alien, but still emotional. Agnes Haus made a fabulous, abstract video for this track and it emphasises this idea of things happening at a watery, molecular level – but still full of emotion.
At one moment I get the sense that I am playing with Luis in this song. I think it’s to do with the sounds I am making and just a playful approach to how I used the pedals here. Suddenly at the end you hear a cold, shutdown noise as I click the looper pedal. I like that it sounds as though a door has been closed. You know when the wind comes through and closes a door, and you get a jolt because it was unexpected? It’s that moment where you feel like being dropped back into reality. You’re literally brought back into the room.

The Wilder Things is me secretly hoping that Luis will come to me in my dreams. Struggling with that emptiness while trying to reassure myself that he is ok and he can reach me if he needs to. But mostly realizing it is me who is trying to reach him. As a friend said to me “animals know when it’s their time.” I think Luis knew he didn’t have long. He had multiple health issues. Maybe that’s why he loved so intensely and demanded all the attention, all the time. Well, he was given so much love. I know that for sure.
For this track, I had looped a part of my vocal that I am running through some filters. It feels comforting, but almost like it’s a thin veil of reality. So you just keep going until it ends – keep it going so you can continue the illusion. Reality pierces through at times and I feel him slipping away. Feels like a separation. A letting go.

The Last Act of Love is me singing through a fog of delays and reverbs. There are no discernible words that I remember. Nothing was looped. This one just flowed out so easily. It’s maybe the only song that I might be able to perform live. I know exactly where I am in time here. I am at the vet saying goodbye to Luis. He has just been euthanized. I am in shock, but knowing it’s the last loving act that can be done to ease his suffering. It’s a moment that sticks in my mind, and in the mind of anyone who has experienced this. Walking home with an empty cat carrier is heartbreaking. My body feels numb while tears uncontrollably flow down my face and onto the pavement. That’s where I am in this song. Feeling such heartache, and yet such love for Luis throughout it all.

Oh gosh, that was a big and intense share! Hopefully it gives you insight into these songs, the tracklisting and my creative process when I improvise. I really am just feeling everything in the moment and responding with the music.