about the cassette

Shoeb Ahmad conceived the Breather project during peak lockdown on the Australian continent. Ruminating on a dry season marred by devastating bushfires led Ahmad to start writing the A Body Full Of Tears album. Plunged into isolation and confronting the trauma of environmental degradation and pandemic realities, Ahmad decided to continue exploring and started to create a space for long-form, meditative compositions.

Ahmad performed these new mediations, the Breather sessions, in the middle of the day and live-streamed them so people could tune in and meditate and reflect along with the music while they had lunch, read a book, or work. In late 2020, she was given a grant that covered lost income from live performance in return for creating a body of work with the Breather concept. This time rather than do something durational, Ahmad played with the idea of using simple 10-second videos from her surroundings creating shorter works that could play as infinite loops.

These loops, when collected together, could be randomized to dovetail in and out of a playlist with a sense of endlessness. It was an exercise in restraint – adhering to an ambient wallpaper aesthetic for continual respite from the uncertainty we currently live within.