Ian Hawgood's Love Retained is laced with poignancy. These 10 sketches - "simple pieces...tracked to cassette, & contain[ing] no editing or mastering, so you know, filled with 'mistakes'" - are deeply affecting. Their restraint & directness amplifies the sense of frailty around their "beautiful & freeing" incompletion.
Hawgood originally intended to pass the mostly piano tracks on to potential collaborators. But he came to use them unadorned: "looping on low levels at night, or when the mind wonders/wanders."
The release - numbered homen100, formally out on Christmas Day & with a photo by Melanie Hawgood - is also intensely valedictory. Due to depression, Hawgood "will likely not complete a new album ever again." As a result, it marks "my first & last solo release on the label [Home Normal] I founded with my friend Ben many moons ago, & also marks me fully stepping down from the label after returning for a bit in 2016."
Profits will go to Mind.
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