In June 2019 we had our first child, a wonderful tiny girl. She’s always been our silly baby. She wears silly pants, silly socks, and does silly things. I had no idea what life would look like with a baby, or what it would feel like. You add this unimaginable experience to your life - for me the hardest, most tiring and most incredible experience to date - your world becomes about this tiny warm feral bundle but you have to try also to retain some semblance of yourself.

For me, music was an anchor, one of the earliest things I could share with her. And, for her, sound was the only way of communicating her basic needs. I started ‘field recording’ her with the idea that I would create music with her voice - beautiful music celebrating the magic of a baby.

But… babies don’t make beautiful sounds. They cry. They graduate to blowing raspberries. Their early experimentation with their voices is atonal at best. Shrieks of happiness are still, at their core, shrieks. And parenthood isn’t always beautiful either. It is the strongest version of emotions and feelings. It’s a ferocity of love which is frightening, months of waking hallucinations of accidentally falling asleep with her in bed, exhaustion, confusion, crying (all parties), and a lot of bouncing her to sleep to the soothing tones of black metal!

So this is my tribute to our silly baby and the weird world of parenthood: bouncy electronica, drones made of cries, early words, mangled raspberries, and the silliest, tiniest high-energy club banger I’ll ever make.

1. Laughter (5 months)
Our smiley baby was late to laugh! We were so desperate for baby giggles and she finally acquiesced at about 5 months. Throughout the album her voice is often mangled and twisted into new sonic shapes, but here her giggles are front and centre!

2. Babbling Beats (10 months)
Was that her first word? Was that? I think ultimately it was "backpack" or "ack ack". She was always chattiest on the changing mat, a mix of practicing phonics like "da da" and weird atonal musings, which form a disconcerting chorus here against music box melodies.

3. Blowing Raspberries (6 months)
Raspberries were the first sound it seemed like she had control over, where we could 'converse' with her and practice back-and-forth communication of the simplest and silliest variety! Here her raspberries take on more of a percussive role alongside the changing mat atonal singing with which they were interspersed.

4. As High As I Can Reach (9 months)
There was a period where she would shout at her books as we read them to her. We never knew if she was mimicking reading along with us, reacting to the cadence of the stories, or just playing with her voice. Whatever the reason, I love the contrast between the sweet story and her seemingly emotive reactions.

5. You Make Some Good Points (11 months)
As she mastered more basic sounds, her babbling took on the cadence and pitch of speech, even while the content was meaningless to our ears. I liked to imagine she was making profound statements about the universe.

6. Silly Seat (5 months)
When I first thought about doing this project, I imagined it would all be really beautiful. Baby babbles reverbed into infinity, an angelic chorus. But as mentioned, babies are atonal and just aren't trained recording artists. This is her experimenting with a ball, sat in her silly seat, concentrating really hard. She's made the same slightly eerie concentration sound since she was around this age, and still does at 17 months!

7. Yeah Yeah (12 months)
Sat in her high chair, practicing saying 'yeah' with great enthusiasm. Need I say more?

8. I Don't Know What You Want And I'm So Sorry (1 month)
We were pretty lucky when she was tiny. She generally cried for an easy-to-address reason. Hungry, needing a new nappy, tired. But I wanted to capture those moments where you just don't know and the tiny being you love more than you could ever conceptualise is sad and it's overwhelming and it's 2am. Because that's part of parenthood.

9. Bathtime (6 months)
What a simple joy. Splashing, bath toys, delighted squeals. Do I really have to ruin it by washing her hair?

10. Can You Love Me More Than The Planets? (15 months)
She's always responded to music. Whether it's been falling asleep to black metal or dancing to playful electronica using only her silly belly. As her speech exploded recently, she started singing along to the chorus of a track from the latest Everything Everything album and my heart melted. A little duet between the two of us at bedtime. Can you love me more than the planets?