This lovely output by Ian Hawgood, the man behind the curtains of Home Normal came out on the label's store as a gift for Christmas, but it reached stores after one month. Maybe the way I described Ian in the previous sentence could summarise the floating of his musical soul and his memory by which he watered "Love Retained" - the 100th release of his imprint -, as it's a moving evidence of humanity and got composed during days when Ian was somehow behind the curtains. He masked his depression to the eyes of his friends and family till the moment a particularly stressing moment, related to his decision of leaving Japan together with his wife in early 2015. In his own words: "The intensity of the move and the reasons behind it caused a huge amount of stress for us both and due to our backgrounds we were unable to communicate just how hard this was to any of our friends and family. By early autumn, my mother and sister one day had come over to find me curled up in a ball, unable to speak and in an uncontrollable fit of tears. This was nothing new after a life spent in and out of severe depression but it was the first time family had seen this directly in my adulthood.". Dedicated to the women of his life (mostly his wife and his sister, I guess), Ian initially composed the piano sketches he included in this album for future collaborations, but he finally decided to keep as they were with no editing or mastering. They got recorded on cassette and looped on low levels in the nighttime or when his mind was wondering or wandering, as he told in the introductory words for "Love Retained", and his decision of offering them incomplete is a meaningful gift, as incompletion is "a beautiful and freeing thing" in Ian's viewpoint. Some of the piano loops are really good for nocturnal meditations, other ones sound like sonic heartfelt portraits of people that helped Ian to come out of that state of mind, but the whole release got imbued with an intense and catchy emotionality. In the introduction of "Love Retained", Ian focused on a very important aspect of depression, that got often misunderstood by people who try to support them, but in a wrong way: "Silence is the real killer. It feels embarrassing and shameful to speak of such things as it shows weakness, which leads to awful judgement from most people. This may sound negative, but the simple fact is we all judge others whether we want to or not. And those who suffer from depression have a stigma attached to them. That stigma's name is 'pity' and it isn't very helpful in truth, albeit understandable. People who suffer from depression can feel joy, can laugh, and can connect deeply to others, but they also need friends and family to support them now and then in a world where people are growing increasingly alien to one another.". All the profits from this album have been and will be donated to Mind (check their website here: http://mind.org.uk/), a charity organisation helping people suffering from mental diseases.