A Place Of Solace

This album is the result of some musings on what drives us in life and how we come to terms with our place in the world. I wrote it around the time I was finishing my philosophy degree. I had also come to a point where I wanted to make music that was more personal, emotional and conceptual than before.

The inspirational point of departure from which everything developed was Stalker, the Tarkovsky film. A personal favourite, which also happens to explore many similar themes as my studies came to focus on: meaning and purpose in life, existence and our relationship to reality, the emotions that steer our existence…

We are deficient creatures. Powerless and ignorant of reality as a whole, and unfortunately our characteristic existence makes us painfully aware of that. Reality is fundamentally hostile (or indifferent rather) and we are not well ‘fit’ to live in it. We try to deal with this through emotional means. We seek comfort for our deficiencies, a sense of purpose and belonging…

In Stalker people who have exhausted all other means of comfort seek for a room that is rumoured to manifest our innermost desires. They have to journey through a place that disobeys all of our notions of reality, a place both unpredictably dangerous and welcoming to those who find nothing worth living for outside of it. While evading our grasp it offers understanding to the lost and solace for the burdens of existence.