about the cassette

"In two times of crisis—before coming out as a woman, and in the late days of a dark American presidency—I turned to improvisation as a funnel for the unknown. I looked for what I couldn’t imagine when the possibility of imagining differently seemed slim. This double EP came from this longing. Moments blur: I held young women weeping in the streets one election night, crying out, what will I tell my daughters; and I was held in turn when the self I had known fractured, showing an unfamiliar light beneath my skin. In these songs I kept the rawness of invention because that rawness felt human: the craquelure of becoming anyone, perhaps.

Electronics were my post-human companions and counterparts in this search. They offered another body, another rhythm to sing with. In Her Water Dream, a small modular synthesizer emulating mid-century electronic music studios gave me tactile roads. In Image of a Blue Thumbs-Up, my laptop was a mirror, always recording, layering. In both records, my poetry and spontaneous texts shaped form and scale.

I hope this debut record under my chosen name moves something in you too; like transition, perhaps, it's the beginning of a path, not an end."

— Ariadne Randall