For six years, Ines Calder was the lead singer of an indie-rock quintet that toured relentlessly across Europe. When the group dissolved during a winter tour, she bought an audio interface, locked herself in a Glasgow basement, and learned how to build arrangements from scratch.
When did you realize you needed to make this record entirely on your own?
Ines Calder: It was probably the third day after we broke up. I was sitting at the piano with all these voice memos I had collected over three years. Every time I had played them to other people, someone had suggested making the chorus bigger or speeding the tempo up. I just wanted to hear what they sounded like without anyone else’s opinion attached.
Was learning production terrifying or liberating?
Calder: Both at once. For the first two months, I was weeping over EQ curves. But once the vocabulary clicked, it felt like being given the keys to a house I had only ever looked at from the pavement.