At the start of this year, I decided to take this project in a different direction. I would give myself longer to release each volume, and exert a higher level of "quality-control" over the improvisations: I would select only my favourite improvisations to release. This seemed like a natural next step for this series.

I very quickly found that I wasn't happy with any of them, and became dispirited with the whole exercise. I drifted away from the practise entirely and didn't return to it until recently. You can see this story told in the dates of each improvisation on this volume. There are a handful from January, two from February, one from April, and then nothing until June when I picked it up again.

What I found from being more selective about what I would share was that the self-conscious part of my ego took over, and told me they were all unfocussed and erratic, or boring, or poorly recorded, or just didn't reflect a side of me I wanted people to hear. It wasn't until I started craving the joy of creation and sharing again that I started making more, and reflecting on the ones that had been sitting on my computer in a judgemental purgatory. I found that there was nothing to be ashamed of in these early recordings, at least not more so than the music I've already released through this project. Some of them are vulnerable, but I've found over and over again that sharing your vulnerability makes you stronger. There's also something special in vulnerable work that I think is worthy of our attention, and that we can all benefit from considering.

I still see this one as an odd collection. It's a tale of me losing, and then finding again, my creative confidence. There's some conceptually-driven works here, and some that are random bursts of musical thoughts. For all its inconsistency, there is however a theme of dissolution, dying, endings and beginnings, and cycles of becoming, that runs through all these pieces.

I'm going to return to releasing one of these a month, and see what happens the deeper I go into this project. There are some things I'm working on in my musical practice that I would like to explore through these improvisations in the coming months, and perhaps write more about too.

P.S. The tracks that didn't make it onto this volume (262, 266 and 272) were only excluded because that had some weird glitchy pops and crackles that I couldn't get rid of. If anyone knows what these might be, let me know!