A piece, split into four parts, attempting to imagine and evoke the interior world of a Common Swift (apus apus) in its first four years of life. After dropping from its nest and taking its first flight, a swift will spend this period almost entirely airborne, going months or years at a time without ever landing and then only briefly. Feeding and even sleeping in flight, swifts will only come back down for an extended period when they are old enough to mate. Even after this point, the vast remainder of their lives will be spent in the air, during which time they can travel over a million kilometres. I’ve always loved swifts, but they’ve held special meaning for me ever since I moved into my current flat in North Somerset a few years ago and realised that some were nesting in the roof here. Not three feet from my desk where I wrote and recorded this piece, I can hear them shuffling and rustling above me in the early summer. Seeing them scream and swoop overhead with seemingly boundless freedom for a couple of months of the year is one of my favourite things about living where I do. Common swifts spend most of the year in Africa, arriving back in the UK and across the rest of Northern Europe in late April / early May to breed and raise chicks. I started writing and recording this album when they left at the start of August in 2022, with the aim of finishing it by the time they returned. I heard my first swift of the year last week, so I think I just about managed it.

Solo cello improv. Single take. One mike. Track 1 recorded in two parts at the Silver Road venue (a converted water tank) in Lewisham. Tracks 2, 3 + 5 recorded at the OTO Project Space in Dalston. Track 4 recorded at home in Sutton. All tracks recorded on an Olympus LS-11.released February 27, 2017

Solo cello improv. Single take. One mike. Track 1 recorded on an Olympus LS-11 then fed through a Korg/Microbrute set-up with some keys held down. Track 3 played with a whole load of reverb. Track 4, solo cello with a postcard woven through the strings. Track 5 recorded at the Cafe OTO. All the rest recorded at home in New Cross.released January 14, 2016

"Look, I’m not offering excuses here, except... I guess I just want to give you some semblance of who I am. Or who I was at least. How it went... What led me all the way out here..." There The Sun Also Rises is a short story and album by Oliver Barrett; both parts inspired by and extrapolating on the other. Told by a man looking back on his life, the things he's left behind, and all the decisions that led him to up to a single revelatory experience, the story is both a wide-eyed, cosmic science fiction tale and a deeply personal reckoning with what has come to pass. The download includes the accompanying short story, 'There The Sun Also Rises', as a pdf file.released April 30, 2021 All music written, recorded and produced by Oliver Barrett.