It takes a village to release an album

I’ve been a little quiet, settling into the home and the studio, preparing for the album launch concerts coming up and collating my thoughts. The moment I released the album a heavy exhaustion came over me.

I’d felt that so much weighed on the release and when it was done, holding the records in my hands, I was excited about how far we’ve come with this instrument (not to be Steve Jobs about the ‘we’, but it’s really not a one person endeavour!), and I also felt a freedom: I wanted to achieve a particular thing and it feels embedded in the album.

I can hear what I was going for and I’m excited about this work like I haven’t been for any other to date.

​
That being said, the freedom wasn’t of the album. Now that it exists, I don’t have to try to do what it does in my live concerts anymore, or in the new music I’m working on. After the release, I was overcome with a rush to make all that I was wanting to but couldn’t until this was done.

I wanted to make a record to put the decade into a boat, released it into the world and freed the instrument and its sound from my physical attachment to it in live performance.

After that, now I can make all the rest that I want to.

the freedom soon became a dark cloud that came over me and stayed over me for weeks. It’s only been the past 2-3 weeks that I’ve been feeling like I’m coming out of it. Ailsa’s St Lucy has been my guardian song for the past few days and in it I really hear the most generous way I could interpret the past few months.
​

All in time, because for the next 6 weeks I won’t have a weekend without a concert or being away or doing a development, and as the spring brings blooming waratah to my garden, it’s bringing lots of thinking about the summer ahead, the year that will follow it, and the action it will bring.

Music feels like a joke - how it is possible to have something so exciting that means no matter what, you’re never bored, never alone and never too many steps away from inspiration?

In my dark cloud weeks, conversations with fellow makers, great friends who’ve visited from near and far, new friends and old friends in other musical practices have kept me company and have held me up.

I’m reluctant to let myself be taken care of, but I'm learning to accept care, letting myself make what I want, and the more I do both of these things, the more they keep going hand in hand.

Not to sound too new age, but this is a great little time to be having, and #blessed to be just here for the ride. I’m happily confused about what it all is or means, but maybe Cage’s friend he went mushroom foraging with is right and life is just a collection of the little things. The big things have been hard, but the little things have been delightful this year.
​

I had the craziest time, hearing Alice and Jakub piece's in concert - I went to uni with Jakub and having a friend who I go this far back with now feels so special. Alice and I met a few years ago but I don’t really now feel like we’ve never not been friends. Her piece Heirloom stayed on my mind for days and days, only a week later turning into a burst of tears as I remembered my own heirlooms of my mother and grandmother. Jakub’s piece left me drunk with a joy of hearing sound in space the way that sounded like only he could make. He’s cracked the code, and liberated sound!

Before I sign off, I must tell you about the album launch gigs coming up. The album I've been so excited to make, with so much care and input from so many people, is going to be on the road this month. I'll be travelling with the incredible Chloe Kim to play in Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart, and we hope to see those of you who are available at the gigs for sounds, hugs and smiles.

Sydney - People's Republic - September 16, 6pm.

Adelaide - Nexus Arts Centre - September 22, 7:30pm.

Hobart - MONA - September 24, 12pm.

Whether it's been in the making, listening, consulting, caring, cups of tea, wines and rowdy train conversations, walks and hugs, reading, or airport pickups, it's taken a village of my friends near and far to make this album exist, and I'm thankful to all of them.

I'm also playing at Living Room Theatre on September 17 with Jacques Emery, performing a new work for the 63rd anniversary of Indeterminacy, possibly entitled Indeterminacy 2.0.

​

With love,
Iran x

​
​Unsubscribe · Preferences​