For years, Ev Carm's friends have been pushing him to release a full body of work. The Dublin-based multi-instrumentalist spent years working on old, sometimes broken equipment, making music in solitude and sporadically releasing demos. Finally, that full-length project is here in the form of Awake. 

“Ever since I started making music as a teenager, I idealized the idea of making an album, almost to a toxic extent. I dreamed of making my first album, what I wanted to achieve, what I wanted to express, and put the format on a pedestal, which suffocated any subsequent work," Carm says.'

"Only the most arresting, fulfilling work I had ever made would be acceptable for my debut," Carm notes, "and nothing I made fit those categories. I spent years making albums and scrapping them, and started to become disillusioned with music as a whole. After a tough time 2 years ago I took a hiatus from consciously working on music, and abandoned the idea of music as a career. I started to only work on music if I really felt like it, without any intention of creating a greater body of work, only making work when I felt I really needed to. Letting go of the golden calf the ‘album’ had become, and only focusing on what I was doing in the moment allowed me to explore new sounds and ideas, and experiment in a way I never had, without worrying if it was 'good enough'. After a few months of working for the sake of working, I realised that I had subconsciously made a body of work I was really proud of.”

Blending expansive, cavernous production with tentative strings and bright, ethereal piano notes, Awake sees Carm musing about the human condition in fragmented perspectives. The album nearly comes across like a film score, each track a small vignette, a fraction of a perfectly formed whole.

Awake is out now on andfriends records.

Listen to the album below.