“Obscurer” is an instrumental album by UK-based electronic musician Adam Fielding, written and recorded in 2014 and released in February 2015.
In a departure from his more densely layered approach to production, “Obscurer” was largely produced using a modest selection of live recorded analog synthesisers & drum machines. This stripped back approach to production results in a deeply atmospheric listen wrapped around an intensely emotive core, reminiscent of Fielding’s earlier works.
From the deeply comforting embrace of “Safety” through to the dark playfulness of the title track itself, “Obscurer” is an album that revels in reflection and introspection.
On the 28th February, I will be releasing an album of instrumental hardware-centric music called Obscurer. In all honesty, I had originally planned to release it a little later in the year but, hey, it’s finished, and I think it complements the current climate here in the UK rather nicely. As has become standard for my album releases, it will be PWYW upon release, but you can pre-order it for £1 or more right now and get the first two tracks right away.
This is an interesting counter-point to another project I’m currently working on, which is a much more vocal-oriented album which I’m hoping to have completed later this year. After spending some time with Tom Pritchard last year working on our Neffle material, I was really inspired to try something more hardware-oriented for myself, but I didn’t want to burn myself out on it. If anything, I wanted to keep it as a completely separate project that I could escape into when I needed a break from my more densely-layered works. As such, I spent about 6 months sporadically writing music of varying quality, and this album is comprised of what I consider to be the best picks of the lot. It was incredibly interesting to work with such a different set-up than the one I’m used to – I tend to work primarily in software when it comes to production, so working primarily with analog instruments was an interesting experience. I hope to elaborate a little more later in the month with regards to the ideas and writing process behind the album itself.
It’s a bit of a departure from my usual output, but I’m really pleased with how it turned out as a complete body of work.
You can check out the first two tracks from Obscurer and pre-order it from Bandcamp.
3 thoughts on ““Obscurer” – an album of hardware electronic compositions to be released on 28th February”
Hey Adam! I’m pumped for the new album, but I’ve been wanting to ask you something. Are you still involved in Civil Protection? Because Civil Protection has been one of my favorite post-rock bands for awhile now and I wanted to know if there was going to be anymore material by you. Thanks! -Tom
Typo. Sorry! It’s supposed to be written as “material by them”.
Hi Tom, sorry for the slow response! I parted ways with Civil Protection towards the start of 2014 – no animosity whatsoever, and I’m loving the material they’ve been working on without me. I’m still playing one-off gigs with them when I can, and there’s still a possibility I’ll be producing the next album – so I guess you can think of me as a satellite member of the band at this point. If I end up producing album 2 then you can be sure I’ll post something about it here :]