Thanks for a wonderful party last night! qd19 reaches number one Bandcamp and today’s Part One of our Loula Yorke chat - ideas behind the album x
Shout-outs too!
Hi friends :)
So good to see you all yesterday - thank you for making it such a positive and supportive session! Impossible to express how much I love hanging out with you all, building community through a shared love of music is a wonderful thing and I’m so honoured we’re doing it together x
Obviously helps when the music’s so good, so huge thanks for all the amazing vibes you gave to Loula - she really is an incredible artist and I know how much she appreciates it.
So pleased to wake up this morning to see qd19 sitting at the top of Bandcamp’s all genres/formats chart - number one across the whole platform :) Just incredible - thanks so much to everyone for the support!
More post going out today - CDs still selling fast with a few left if you want - message me if you bought one and want a download.
I asked Loula if she’d like to have a chat about the album, and true to her deeply imaginative creativity - the response was brilliant:
My album for the quiet details series speak, thou vast and venerable head is a plank in the hull of an imaginary ship that once set sail on a quest to uncover the meaning of it all. Think of it as an attempt to cause a glint in the surface of the waves.
Why are you torturing us with esoteric nautical metaphors?
The title of the album is a phrase borrowed from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, as are many of the track titles. The novel is an allegorical ‘holy grail’ quest: exactly like music composition is to me; a puzzle to solve, a way to document and understand myself and the world around me – as well as being a medium of expression, and a conduit for other folks’ projections.
The title is from a gruesome but almost comical scene in the novel where the narrator overhears Captain Ahab – who at this point has been possessed by his quest to kill the white whale, and has actually killed another similar whale, chopped off its head, dragged the head onto the top deck and is interrogating its severed thinker eye-to-eye – saying “Speak, thou vast and venerable head”. He means “Give up your secrets. I want to understand you.”
I first became interested in Moby-Dick when I followed a bot on mastodon / bluesky that spits out passages from the novel at random. I haven’t read the book and I don’t intend to. I actually adore consuming its highly dramatic and overblown language in this disconnected, nonsensical and non-linear way.
How does the idea of quiet details work into this?
I used the invitation from Alex as an excuse to use field recordings again (something I haven’t done since my debut solo release ysmysmysm in 2019 for Junted), and by extension to use a DAW to create the impossible.
The phrase ‘quiet details’ I hope comes across in the production, where field recordings are allowed to take centre stage over synths that, if left at the levels they were originally recorded at, would absolutely swamp them. I really wanted to lean into exploring the textural possibilities within the individual sound recordings, and create synth parts to complement them, rather than vice versa. And in tracks where only synths feature, I relished the chance to feel out as many rhythms and timbres as I could conjure in place of time spent developing melodies.
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Love love love this - the thoughtful exploration of the qd idea, the connection to other art-forms and the truly unique way of looking at the world - coming soon is Part Two with a run-down of the making of each track x
A couple of shout-outs:
Big thanks to Shawn Reynaldo for the qd19 tip in the excellent First Floor - always highly recommended for top-notch music news and insights:
Also the legend that is Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner for playing one of Loula’s tracks on his EarSpace show (along with loads of other fantastic music) - always essential listening, check it out here.
Also to all the people that has posted pics, left comments, reposted and generally supported the release so far - means a lot so thank you!
Part Two coming soon :)
Much love
Alex
quietdetails.com
quiet details Bandcamp
quiet details Substack
quiet details studios - mastering and audio services