Cascades (2014)

All three movements are available seperately.
Loss
From Ashes
Perspective


"The subject of the abandoned place has attracted me ever since the release of my current solo CD Abandoned City. Somehow, pondering, I came to see my inner world time and time again as an abandoned city. I had a longer discussion with my friend, the musician and author, Luke Sutherland (Mogwai/Bows) who told me about the correspondence between Schoenberg and Kandinsky and how they had written a lot about the loss of the existing identity and the striving for a new identity.

Furthermore, I noticed that the inner process of disentanglement from habits by unavoidable loss or by taking a conscious decision will inevitably lead to new development and growth.

Having divided this process into three sections I wrote compositions for each.

1. Loss
Loss, death and abandoning habits are always the beginning of something new, but the process of disentanglement must happen, and this often takes just as long as it took to initially build up.

2. From Ashes
The point where one has released everything and where it is unclear in which direction the next step will go is an interesting time. I always consider it as a kind of reset or a white room, where the direction is not clear and all acquired capabilities seem no longer to work, but nonetheless the capabilities grow more in this time than in others because one is being confronted with oneself.

3. Perspective
Perspective represents striving towards a new beginning and build-up. Within me, new approaches and projects grow and come into focus for some time as the centre of my activities and my thinking. Once they are finished I must separate from them and release them, and go back to a space which leads back to myself. Thus, perspective is at the same time the beginning of loss."

(c) Volker Bertelmann