Remains by Will Gardner

Watching a loved one lose the impossible battle with dementia results in a unique type of grief, a sense of loss over someone who still physically sits right in front of you. For experimental ambient artist Will Gardner, no distinct moment of loss emerged to the foreground in his father’s futile fight with Parkinson's. To highlight this agonizing descent from both perspectives, Gardner’s new record Remains uses an ambient style with frequent disorienting, unorganized, menacing sounds that disrupt the generally tear-jerkingly beautiful sonic foundation. These constant interruptions to the album’s flow follow the contours of Gardner’s father’s journal entries, capturing the paranoia of someone aware that they’re in danger but completely unable to comprehend why and to what degree. All the while, Gardner continuously doubts that the words he finds in the journal even come from the same man he once knew, wondering whether the grieving starts today, tomorrow, or some day in the past that came and went without notice.