Ameel Brecht - The Locked Room (2022)

The Locked Room imagines a protagonist who experiences the outside world as an endless escape room, a place where, in the early hours, every passing tail-light, train in the distance, hunched bike rider or crying bird might be a possible riddle, leading to a passage or the discovery of a key.

Once opened, however, a room locked from the other side could just be the same room as the one you're in - only slightly different. And maybe the person wanting to break free is not you at all, but the sum or remnant of all of your online actions and conversations, a locked-in avatar whose consciousness wants to experience the real world, and real emotion with it.

"This album is about a struggle with the experience of reality, and about the places and zones where you cross over into a different territory. I tried to address these fixations on steel mandolin and gut-string violone."

Clues and conclusions, finding your way like a kid in the dark, virtual illusions and contemporary gaming culture all have their place on The Locked Room, an album of minimal, kosmische mandolin and violone music that documents the elegant collapse of our 21st-Century grip on reality.

All music written and performed by Ameel Brecht on steel mandolin, violone and electric piano.