I thought I was done with releasing music and so in August 2021, I decided to walk away, at least for an extended hiatus. I felt like it was a good time to quit, mainly because I was fairly pleased with the work I’d released and to be honest I thought if I can’t improve on what I’d already done, what’s the point?

However, some developments with my health prompted me to reconsider as things are declining somewhat, and I had to consider that in the not too distant future I might not be able to make music anymore. That has a way of focussing you.

This had two effects; I realised that maybe I do have one more project in me, so I’ve begun demoing some tracks for a future WindHymn release. I also revisited the work I did as An Arresting Strangeness and received another realisation: WindHymn material tended to be more thought-through and conceptual, and AAS was about just having fun improvising and experimenting. Although my work doesn’t sound anything like Jazz, discovering artists like Miles Davis has impacted me massively. If I am able to continue making music I’d like to have that outlet, to be free to experiment and improvise, and if I’m happy with the results, release the work…so who knows; maybe there’s more to come from both An Arresting Strangeness and WindHymn? We’ll have to see, but in the meantime...

I was actually surprised that I liked listening back to these tracks because I usually just focus on what I don’t like and what I should’ve done better. I was just messing around on this stuff, making it up as I went along. Most of it really is just improvisations that I recorded on the fly, and to me it has a kind of purity or naivety about it as I didn’t really know what I was doing!

It was cool to actually listen to the work I’d already released, because I hadn’t actually listened to it just for pleasure, when I quit I spent a long time listening to old Blues and Jazz, and nothing even close to Electronica.

So at this point it felt like a good time to release a compilation album of sorts (I usually hate this kind of thing) but I approached this not as a “best of”, (it’s not exactly a “Greatest Hits” as I’ve never had, or likely to have, any hits! But if someone wanted a pretty good overview of what WindHymn sounds like, this would be a good place to begin.

These aren’t necessarily my favourite tracks from my various EPs, but I wanted pieces that complimented each other and worked in the context of an album in its own right, and that idea influenced the running order too. I also wanted to make sure I didn’t put all my “best” stuff on here, as I always enjoy exploring an artist’s catalogue and finding the deep cuts that don’t make it to compilations.

The original main WindHymn releases were each part of larger concepts such as Sound Installations, and included other elements including Film and Sculpture. You can read more in their respective notes, but there was a particular thread that ran through them; Creation (“The Heavens Declare...”), Fall (“Entropy”/“A Sort of Homecoming”/“A Sort of Homecoming Part II: Run. Out.”) and Redemption (“My Splendour Has Become My Ruin”/“My Ruin Has Become My Splendour”). Putting Theological concepts in music is probably not very popular these days, but I would be dishonest not to write about what has motivated these projects, so if you like what you hear and you’d like to know more, think of this compilation as a doorway to exploring the rest of my work, and you can read the sleeve notes for each release as you listen:)

If even one person enjoys listening to this, then that would be amazing.