The last Closed Circuits album.
I began using the name Closed Circuits in 2007, in the aftermath of having performed in Glenn Branca's guitar orchestra. Armed with a Tascam 4-Track, MPC 2000, and a couple of open-tuned guitars, the first release was arranged as a banishing ritual, titled ∞. With the help of friends, I was able to record the tracks digitally, and a CD-R was made up with a design pack I found at a stationer's.
To perform this live, I was joined by guitarists Simon Arthur and Andrea Vergani, and a recording of the bellicose noise that we produced became the Live Tape. However, through a series of scheduling issues, fate intervened, and left without the need to write guitar parts, I began to explore more electronic sounds as a solo act - indeed, the quieter, more experimental songs from the first album have best endured, despite my need to channel some youthful rage.
.156 was the first foray into more exclusively electronic territory, and garnered a promising review from The Quietus. At the time, I was also promoting shows around London as a way to be able to perform, and had the ability to play on bills with excellent artists like Liberez, Apostille, and Helm.
It was with Breaker - the first in a series of elementally-inspired albums - that things turned a corner. Finding myself on the other side of the world, with a newly acquired laptop and Ableton, I was amazed to discover a world of sounds at my fingertips that had previously seemed completely out of reach. The record was released on vinyl thanks to the help of my good friend Lisa Lavery, and also received a great write-up in The Quietus.
A move to Portugal followed, along with the completion of the elemental album cycle in 2020, and even more albums and EPs coloured by life, love, lockdown, and loss.
& is the culmination of the work. A breaking open of the ∞ to allow others in. It is also the first record to feature guitar since .156 - though much of it may be hard to discern as such, being a Casio MIDI guitar that is generating both "regular" and sampled sounds. In discussion with friend, musician and artist Andy Holden, we came to the conclusion that inviting others into what had always been an almost solipsistic means of expression, could add new depth and colour to previously closed-off sounds. As such, I am incredibly grateful that Dale, Karl, Richard, and Kitty all agreed to bring their extraordinary talents to this album. Andy's voice also opens the record, doing his best to speak Portuguese at my request, and my Portuguese friend Mariana in turn speaks in English at the beginning of Vampire Heartz.
I am indebted to all of these collaborators, as well as to Violeta Page, who has been my main collaborator since Breaker, and whose voice can be heard bringing light into previous records, where there might only otherwise have been darkness.
“&” had at one time been part of the alphabet - the 27th letter that suggested both an end and a beginning. And so we change, and begin again.
For Chiara
& tracklisting (In Finite Records 017)
1. &
2. Vampire Heartz
3. The Murmurations
4. Vicious Spirits (featuring Dale Cornish)
5. American Void (featuring Karl D'Silva)
6. A Permanent Twilight (featuring Richard Skelton)
7. Husbands
8. Auguries
9. Andy's Feathers
10 . The End (featuring Kitty Whitelaw)
