“Puzzle Music is the desire to create images out of diverse pieces of sound. To collect timbral colours in a gradient procession and connect them until they create reason. Principally not knowing how the image will turn out, or what the picture even is. It is the act of placing sound shapes next to one another in the hope that clarity will gradually be revealed.When grouping the songs together I was thinking of them as mechanisms in a timepiece. I have something of an obsession with Swiss watchmaking, although I think this stems from a desire for creative mastery and the design of an energy source independent of electronic needs. Hopefully the songs all serve a purpose towards the end goal of the album... but also, the way the Oberheim Xpander pans sounds is in a very clear circular pattern, which makes me think of gears turning.”- Madalyn Merkey --- Interior sounds from Madalyn in an album that flits between eerie ambience, environment, and hermetic logic. The music’s timing and sequencing feels distant, the elegant constructions conjured and organised semi-consciously, drawing the listener deeper into the dream and towards a zone where watch hands tick forward accurately and their perception of time unspools. Here each neatly tuned conversation and clockwork assemblage harmonises, spinning tantalisingly just out of range and understanding.  --- Artwork by Casey LeungVinyl mastered and lacquer cut by Kassian Troyer @ Dubplates and Mastering, Berlin.

Recorded in her boyfriend's kitchen in Menlo Park, CA, part of Silicon Valley, 'Crushed Shells' sees electronic artist Madalyn Merkey start her practice afresh, engaging with a whole new set of tools. Starting from a hodgepodge of small borrowed equipment, Madalyn's set-up grew into d.i.y. eurorack modules until it took up the whole room. The album is reflective of this raw, homemade process, including first time interactions with the equipment through to blossoming sound worlds. In her own words, "it is about starting from scratch and seeing where things go." At once baroque and experimental, Madalyn lets wandering melodies find their feet in open terrain. Crystalline synth lines meet others in gentle harmony and disharmony, like slow moving clouds floating past each other, overlapping and forming new shapes. Elsewhere she lets sounds blip, fizz and crack, gifting each gesture plenty of space to come into being. Rather relying too much on iterative electronic phrasing, she creates lively sonic dynamics, with altered repetitive patterns dancing in flux with punctuated rhythms. Carrying itself with a weightless minimalism, 'Crushed Shells' soundtracks an artist that has built a small new world for themselves, and has opened the kitchen window for us all to see. -- Madalyn Merkey - Waldorf blofeld with midi keyboard & d.i.y. eurorack modules -- Mastered by Oliver Barrett