Michael Begg 'Hivernant' CD

Michael Begg: After releasing World Fair (Omnempathy, 2014) I became a sketchbook. I had a few creases and the best way of smoothing them out was to take a swift, light touch and make marks on paper. I documented the landscape in East Lothian, and the watercolours were nothing more than the evidence of time spent looking. And that was enough. I sketched notes about silence, about space and place, music and recording. I took one step to the side and listened to the time rush by. I applied the same light touch to the studio. I sketched. It was enough. I somehow, briefly, removed ambition and purpose and found, in the winter, a moment of repose. I now feel like some little winter animal, a hivernant, arising from sleep. Like Dirt On Earth, Hivernant is, I think, a political statement, albeit one that I cannot yet articulate in terms other than of itself. It may have something to do with retreat, with acknowledging one’s influences, with abdication of the self, with producing work as something other than a reaction. It is another Pocket Of Resistance