‘Home Normal’ is a compilation of tracks we released in 2020 and will release in 2021…
The year was impactful for everyone around the world due to the Covid-19 pandemic and consequent lockdowns. After deciding to take a long hiatus after leaving Japan, we decided to move the label back home and restarted the label in the middle of the lockdown in 2020 in our little seaside studio in East Sussex.
Sadly we had to move out of the studio due to the financial implications of a cancelled series of shows and personal work. However, moving back home has been a real blessing and on a personal level I found myself more connected to my own music and those of my friends, as well as just taking time to be still at home.
The label has come back in a way that really has been such a joy, even if the future is uncertain as it is obviously a hard time to buy and sell physical products right now for so many of us. We wanted to work with great artists, good souls, and to create beautiful works of art filled with humanity, spirit and a fierce sense of hope.
The title for the album ‘Home Normal’ seems so apt as the label finally feels at home somewhere. Being forced to calm my own wandering spirit has led to a great deal of peace, and for the first year since our inception we’ve worked with close friends with a patient sense of their own creative nature.
The cover image was taken on one of my many flights to either the US or Japan when I was university age. I actually think it may have been my first time going to Japan when I was just eighteen on my gap year, and if so it was a trip that completely changed (or should we say ‘directed’) my life. As we have been unable to leave these shores for almost a year now (for the first time in my life), this image perfectly resembles the hope of motion and journeying on, but also the transient nature of life in all its infinite beauty.
Thank you so much for all the love you’ve shown for the work we’ve all done. Blessings to you and yours, and may your life be one of joy through adversity, as we all must overcome. Despite the distance, we are together in some wonderfully weird way. And for that, I am most thankful. – Ian Hawgood