I’m finding it hard to write lately. Summer has historically been a slower period for HearFeel, and as the years go by my time seems to become thinner and less available for both writing and listening and it only compounds the infrequency of my posts. And although I’m cognisant of these shifts and flows within my life, those passages of consumption into gestation and delivery, of the finite energy I have to direct across my other creative outputs, it doesn’t make it less difficult.

And I worry, I worry that things like this that are precious to me (and, I have to accept albeit perhaps modestly, to my audience as well) will disappear, float off to become just another piece of digital flotsam and I will be left voiceless.

I was originally going to say that it’s for reasons unknown that I recently found myself back at Heartless‘ doorstep, particularly odd because I haven’t listened to bvdub’s work for a few years now, and indeed didn’t talk about this record at the time of its release in 2017. But now I think I realise that it’s not strange at all, on either count. A record that almost wears its heart too much on its sleeve trying to hold back the tide of piling emotions behind it, and a time now where I feel more than ever the need to be earnest in a world of meta-irony and bullshit therapy-speak without the time to do everything I feel I need to.

Despite its title Brock Van Wey’s – by my counting anyway – 30th record under his bvdub alias, is anything but heartless. Elegiac synth loops, paulstretched textures and floaty vocal lines suffuse almost every moment, and when it’s not radiating ethereality, idiosyncratic piano chords plaintively underscore it all. With the exception of a few glimpses in “Nameless” where an unknown voice sings of “your heart torn to pieces” much of the album’s speech is indistinct, lost amidst nebulous realms of floaty rumination. Often this turns introspective and maudlin ala opening “Sleepless”, and the darkling drones of (comparatively) brief “Flawless”, or perhaps the slowly creeping piano despondency of “Limitless”.

Elsewhere though we feel the glow, usually bent on a trajectory of prismatic lightening: elongate “Painless” opens and closes on the aforementioned piano meanderings, musing longingly whilst in fact sandwiching much more empowered interior energies with all its sustained crooning. Its equally elongate partner “Dreamless” has long been the standout for me though, reflecting a similar enveloping brightening as it incrementally balloons in slow-motion crescendo. Much of the record feels this way in fairness, as though some aura is being inexcusably leaked out despite our best efforts to hold back this vulnerability we radiate, though “Dreamless” seems to capture the totality of this spectrum of sentiments.

This feeling of feelings, all these overlapping expressions vying for their moment with just not enough moments to contain them all, is what life seems like sometimes. How can one find time to reflect on this glut of happenings and process them accordingly, express them honestly? But then it stops long enough for them to all come together and there you are, talking about another album that managed to find its way to you at the just the right moment.