Hello! Welcome to our third album.
Within these tracks you will find many sounds, slowly cultivated over the last couple of years. These songs have been long in gestation and we are very happy that they may now find their way to your ears at long last.

Say, "welcome to my ears!" so that the songs know it's alright to come in.

This record was originally supposed to be recorded at the end of April 2020, after a week long tour at the beginning of the month. For obvious reasons, this was all cancelled and the trio was suddenly separated - both by the pandemic and actual distance, as Nick had recently moved to New York while Chris and Jack remained in Baltimore. After spending years seeing each other just about once a week, if not more - this sudden disconnect was an extra layer of strangeness and discomfort in addition to everything else we all felt during the pandemic.

We'd been working on this music for so long that by the time October rolled around and we had a chance to record it, it was surreal to revisit the songs. The world was different, we were different, and the music felt alien; like it had been transported from an era that had since passed by. Before recording, we spent 5 days isolating together in upstate New York and realized that it would be impossible to recapture the essence and sound that we had built throughout the years, but that maybe something new and beautiful could emerge. What you'll hear here is not what was originally intended. Instead, it represents both the joy we felt getting to see each other after a long time apart, as well as the difficulty of trying to continue to make music during a time when inspiration and energy felt pretty far away.

We here at Aglera do hope that you and your loved ones have been keeping safe and inspired through these trying times - and finding small joys wherever you can. Recording this music has certainly been one of those joys for us. We hope that it can be a similar source of healing and escapism for you as well. Sometimes that's all you need.

With much love,
Aglera


Nick Saia - guitar, compositions (except track 3)
Chris Frick - keyboards
Jack Naden - drums, composition for track 3

Art by Austyn Sullivan
Recording and mixing - Edwin Huet
Mastering - Teng Chen

Recorded at Heartwood Studios, October 2020


A note from Nick on track 8, entitled "War Plow" -
This piece was inspired by Esther Nisenthal Krinitz’s series of 36 quilts detailing her experience of the Nazis occupying her hometown in Poland. Krinitz lived in the occupation for 3 years, only to escape later on to Israel and then Texas, United States. The image in her series that stuck with me however is the 8th one, entitled “Digging.” It depicts men and women of her village digging tank trenches for further Nazi expansion - not knowing where the trenches were going to, when the tanks would arrive, or what would happen to them
afterward. The only thing they knew is what would happen if they refused (an execution scene is depicted in the previous quilt). In my piece, I did not want to try and create a sense of the fear or ugliness of war; I have never lived in a Nazi-occupied territory under the threat of death and I have nothing to offer that topic that could do justice to Krinitz’s expression. Instead, I wrote a process piece that starts with two simple four note pitch collections and develops them through a series of text rules. I was and am struck by how often survivors speak of the sheer mundanity of war - the confinement and machine-like nature of life in occupation. I wanted to bring that to life, yet I also wanted to leave room for the piece to express beauty and humanity within those artificial bounds - if for no other reason to pay homage to the humanity and beauty that was destroyed by the occupiers of Krinitz’s village. The drum set part on this is intentionally left with almost no direction and encouraged to improvise texturally behind the guitar and piano, and helps provide an arc. There are no solos or melodies in this piece - just a slow development of the starting idea until it decays and disintegrates and ends, like anything else.

As the world seems to descend further into the same sort of violence and hatred that forced Esther Krinitz from her home, we will be donating 25% of the proceeds from this album to Life After Hate - an organization that works to help people leave hate groups, primarily of the white nationalist and neo-nazi variety. Read more about their work here:

www.lifeafterhate.org/about-us-page

Thank you.