The Broken Divide (2016)

The Broken Divide is a full-length original album, released in May 2016. It is available as a free album via Bandcamp, and is also available via iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and Google Play (among others).

UK-based musician & producer Adam Fielding returns with his latest solo album proper in the form of “The Broken Divide”, written & recorded during 2013-2016, and released in May 2016.

“The Broken Divide” is a riveting fusion of Fielding’s intricate electronic production style and deeply personal songwriting, with themes of wonderment and beauty contrasted against deep introspection and chaos. Based around a series of fragile memories and personal journeys, “The Broken Divide” makes for an emotionally charged and strikingly vulnerable listen as Fielding weaves his way through a wide range of musical styles and moods.

Opening with the contrastingly beautiful and frenzied layers of “The Beginning And The End”, the stage is set for moments of reverence and heady contemplation, such as the explosive “Defining Moments” and mournful “Time To Go”. As a whole, the album revels in emotion, atmosphere and expression, retaining Fielding’s signature blend of lush electronics and organic instrumentation.

With “The Broken Divide”, Fielding has crafted a uniquely expressive and intense work, sure to reward listeners seeking both substance and style.

The Broken Divide was written between 2013 – 2016, with work starting on the album shortly after the release of my third full-length album Icarus. During this time I also released several other albums (Pieces, AdFi, and Obscurer), though The Broken Divide is the release I consider to be my fourth “main” album release. It is, without a shadow of a doubt, my most personal release to date.

After releasing Icarus, I knew I wanted to try something completely different for my next album. My production music and solo material seemed to be naturally forming their own distinctive identities, and so I decided that my next album would focus primarily on personal expression and creativity rather than trying to fit some kind of preconceived notion of audience expectation or to fulfil some kind of particular purpose… sort of in a similar manner to how Pieces initially came about, I guess, but with a much stronger sense of direction.

Early on in the process I hit upon the idea of focussing primarily on events and memories from the past decade or so, and as work continued on the album I felt myself being drawn deeper into a mindset of exploring emotional connections to events and places that I perhaps hadn’t thought about in a long time. You can read a bit more about this concept here.

Work on The Broken Divide seemed to come naturally in waves. The first track I managed to write was the title track (which was in keeping with tradition for my other “main” releases), and it was during the writing and production of this track that I almost inadvertently struck upon the idea of focussing entirely on ideas and memories that were very personal to me. During this first “wave” I ended up writing about three tracks, and during 2014 I had another “wave” in which I ended up writing another selection of tracks. They all seemed to fit together nicely and had an interesting narrative flow, and I decided that I didn’t want to force these ideas but instead to just let them come to me naturally.

Following the release of Pieces in August 2014, I decided that my next album release was going to follow a similar release style, and that it was going to be an independent album release. I still remain incredibly happy with how Icarus turned out musically, but something about the whole release left me feeling somewhat cold and unexcited. Following the release of Pieces, I realised that it was a loss of creative control over certain elements of the release that had affected the release of Icarus. The release of Pieces reminded me of how exciting it was to release something independently and with control over every aspect of the release process, and experimenting with pay-what-you-want release methods and extra bonuses really gave me a strong drive to try something similar with The Broken Divide.

This idea of experimenting with releases almost led me to release The Broken Divide as a series of EPs. Although I was thrilled with how the album was turning out, the stop-start nature of the writing and production was proving a little frustrating at times. I was still working on other production and sound design projects during the creation of The Broken Divide, but I knew that I was onto a really inspirational concept (from a personal point of view) that I absolutely knew had at least an album’s worth of material in it. But, at the same time, there was a part of me that just wanted to release it and continue playing around with release ideas.

During 2015, the final “wave” that I had been waiting for struck me, and I ended up with all of the pieces necessary to put the album together. Once I put all of the pieces together I knew that I’d done the right thing in holding off from releasing a series of EPs. I loved how it all flowed together narratively, and I knew that this was it. This was “Album Four”.

Unlike Pieces, where a bunch of disparate tracks started to sound like they belonged together almost by chance, The Broken Divide was written with a very particular idea in mind, and hearing it all come together at the end was immensely satisfying.

In many ways, The Broken Divide is a natural continuation of everything that has brought me to where I am today, musically. It’s inspired by very particular moments that occurred during a very musically formative part of my life, and as a result is much more of a personal expression of who I am and how I got here than most of my other releases.

Much like Pieces, I decided to release an Audiophile Master and Extended edition to Bandcamp subscribers as a way of thanking my biggest supporters for their continued support over the years, while making the main album available to everyone for free.

I’m incredibly thrilled to say that the excitement of releasing music independently is still strong, and if this is any indication then I have no idea where my next solo project will take me. All I know for sure is that it’s an exciting time, and that I hope that you’ll join me for the ride.

The Broken Divide was officially released in May 2016.