released September 24, 2025
Slow Blink – Letters Home (PITP, 2025)
Letters Home is the first PITP full-length from Tennessee-based Slow Blink (aka Amanda Haswell), who aptly describes her compositions as “tape loop weather patterns”. Across the arc of its two half-hour-long pieces, individual melodic elements build into dizzying, cyclical symphonies of melting colors and shapes. Haswell cites bowed guitar, piano, bells, recorder, and toy synthesizers as her primary sound sources, but through her array of effects pedals and tape machines, the discrete qualities of each instrument are obscured and obliterated to create a beautifully hazy universe of slowly unfolding, ready-made nostalgia.
Since establishing Slow Blink in 2018, Haswell has issued more than two dozen short-run releases on esoteric formats like limited cassette, mini-CD, and in one case, a literal message in a bottle (Fata Morgana, 2024). Her attachment to these tactile artifacts reflects the otherworldly magic in her approach to sound, as billowing accumulations of interwoven melodies exhibit both the immensity and frailty of passing clouds. About this suite, she notes, “Nature, childhood memories, and the unknown are my main motivators, and the title, Letters Home, gets at a certain feeling of being away on a journey while daydreaming about those left behind.”
Side one, “The Heart’s Docent”, begins with the lonesome clarion call of a Data-O-Tone (a semi-obscure, monophonic synth from the late 70s), which forms the foundation for a whirl of field recordings, smeared harmonies, and twinkling bells that shift and recombine with the varying length of their loops. As Haswell describes, “The flow of this track reminds me of getting lost in a new love, or a bit like a ballroom dance that subtly unravels as the elements fall in and out of sync with one another.”
On side two, “Laughter at Cascade Park” evokes a technicolor carousel, lilting and stuttering as multiple, overlapping piano lines appear from the edges, steeped in hiss and hum. Named for a defunct fairground in rural Pennsylvania that was once frequented by Haswell’s grandparents, it perfectly captures the bittersweet ache of long-lost joys. She notes, “Cascade Park was a destination for people to gather, have fun, and go on dates… The stories I heard throughout my youth made it seem so idyllic, and I wanted to capture that particular mixture of ecstasy and unease.” Midway through, it shifts into sunset tones as a new set of loops signals the day’s end, and the crowds disperse, adrift in the lingering thrills of escapism.
Prior to Letters Home, Haswell composed the remarkable “Decayed” side of zakè’s Caelum album (Zakè Drone Recordings, 2025), whose expansive meditations on impermanence fit perfectly into her sensitive, handmade processes. While each of her movements is created live in a single take, they are crafted with considerable intention, often requiring many iterations and refinements before reaching their final state. It is this fusion of human design and analog unpredictability that forms the “weather patterns” of her work, and creates a consistent, quiet majesty from patient, organic currents.
Written, recorded, and produced by Slow Blink. Mastered at Ambient Mountain House by James Bernard. Photography by Benoît Pioulard with Polaroid SX70 film. Design and layout by zakè. Marketed, distributed, and copyright: Past Inside the Present. Pressed, manufactured, and assembled by Analogue Media Technologies, Inc. DBA
Duplication.ca, Montreal, Canada. ©℗ 2025 Past Inside the Present. This is PITP68. All rights reserved.
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