351 Indian Trail, Rockton, Illinois, USA, is the address where Irving Park grew up, the place he thought of as home during much of his youth. Inside the house, an old console piano sat in the living room, its music accompanied by the natural, echoing ambience of the room itself. The music of the house lived inside the well-worn creak of an elderly chair and its spluttering wood; it was also in an ever-changing symphony of littered conversations, adjoined to those shuffling, impatient sounds that frequent a rainy afternoon. They are vocal ghosts; they happened while he recorded the music, filtering in and transforming the general tone of the house and the recording it subsequently birthed, becoming a vital part of the music’s fabric, helping to flesh out the music’s muscle and bone whilst giving the music a ‘lived-in’ feel.
Much of the music was written and recorded over his last summer here, just after he graduated from high school. Only later, after leaving for Chicago, was it processed and further manipulated. In his last few years of high school, he began to relate home with a strong feeling of anxiety, and this shines through in the slightly abrasive, gritty substances of static that linger around and cut into the gentle, flowing river of notes. Studying music or art was never really encouraged back at home, but nothing can stop a soul from wanting to create. It flows through the blood, craved more than oxygen. And so he began to feel a soft but growing disassociation between house and home, leading to a nasty hive of anxious, dislocated thoughts and an awakening of long-dormant insecurities.
These are authentic emotions, but feelings can change over time. Situations and scenarios don’t always work out the way you want them to, but they can provoke a response of inner strength and deep resilience, and as such the music is an outpouring of the heart, a passionate release that only music can deliver. Serene melodies are slowly invaded by electronic convulsions, and something lurks beneath the seemingly-still waters. His reprocessing demonstrates breakdown and decay in what should have been a safe environment. Instead, it fell apart. Everything has been poured out here. The house aged, of course, and in that ageing it became a strained, strange thing. The soul was in need of its own repair, too, but those blossoming, fungal-like splinters were ultimately erased when encountering the transforming power of music. The record stands alone, like a house at the end of the street, steeped in bravery as it confronts its demons until they result in resolution. It’s about stepping out and doing things your way, the way you were always meant to, and in that there is redemption and repair. Its strength lies in its weakness. After all, home is where the heart is.
Release Date: 01.06.17
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