"Seeds of Songs is a kind of aural chronological retrospective of the year of Corona. For the first lockdown months which started back in March 2020, my creativity literally froze. When all my concerts and activities got canceled, faced with these shocking at the time situation, I lost motivation to work or produce anything and lured myself into the pleasure of sudden free time, connecting daily to the beauty of spring. I slowed down, observed, and I listened - to the world within and outside, to my thoughts, my heart, my mood, my close and distant surroundings, to the sounds heard each day and night at my home, in the presence of no one besides my children… my listening became deeper, undisturbed, conscious, lovable. And before I even knew it, it connected strongly to the process of creation of this album.

I learned about Takuroku and its mission from Lucy Railton, quite shortly after the launch of the label, and immediately imagined to put out a new solo. But it wasn’t the right moment back then, so I gave myself the needed time and patience, expecting nothing. Months later, in Sept. 2020, I finally had the will to record and give voice to the manifestation of this long months of listening. The will of capturing more sounds afterwards continued the slow process. Snippets of the most familiar, alongside the sudden and unrepeatable, field recordings, my voice, playing various objects and small instruments - this is what I was recording for the months till end of 2020, and a selection of it ended up being material for this release. I finally started editing at the beginning of 2021, and engaged fully with it for the following two months.

It is the first time that I create a completely new composition by imagining and collaging together various unrelated sounds. At first, there were paired as short ideas, as seeds of the upcoming work. I found myself drawn into a number of short, songlike voice parts from the recorded collection, and slowly, they all started connecting to one another in a very organic way. In many different cultures of the world, songs express otherwise forbidden feelings, thoughts, emotions. While I am far from the will and ability of full body narrative song expression, these seeds of non-narrative songs give an abstract, but direct glimpse into the condensed essence of what lies deep inside me."

- Biliana Voutchkova

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All music by Biliana Voutchkova

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Mastered by Taku Unami

Part of this album was recorded on 2.9.2020 at Ausland / Berlin by Roy Carroll

All other recordings and cover image by Biliana Voutchkova

Cover artwork by Oliver Barrett