June 2023, I’m back home.

With me, the second half of my mother’s record collection now joins the first half that I took 10 years ago, when my parents decided to leave my childhood home in the Paris region to move to Brittany.

This particular collection, enriched with my father’s records, is deeply rooted in my earliest memories. I can still picture the album covers and the record player sitting in the living room. I can still hear the music playing, and remember the first scratches my brother and I made in secret.

It’s a collection of artists from all different backgrounds that fills the living room on various evenings and afternoons, whenever my mother wasn’t working. Weather Report, Gong, Genesis, Led Zeppelin, Soft Machine, Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Return To Forever, Allan Stivell, Yes, The Doors, Frank Zappa and many more—these artists accompanied my first steps and my childhood spent in the family living room.
Today, as I listen again to these sounds from the '60s and '70s, an entire generation, an entire era—my parents' youth—unfolds before me, playing out as I listen.

It’s summer, the weather is beautiful outside, yet I stay inside. I immerse myself over and over in my mother’s records, reliving for a brief moment the past few weeks spent with her.

For several months, she had been fighting for her life, and during the long afternoons when we talked, my mother chose to share stories from her youth, the adventures she had both in France and abroad, her doubts, but also the certainties that followed. These are precious moments, now engraved in my memory.

I listen to her records, crying, hoping to feel her presence, briefly forgetting the loss, imagining her young and full of life.

On the night of May 21st to 22nd, 2023, she passed away.
I am in shock. I am lost. I am at home, and I am alone.

Every piece of music that inspires me gives me a chance to be with my mother in her absence, to ease the pain of losing her. To honour her memory, I sample her records endlessly, day and night, blending the iconic bands of the '70s with the artists that inspire me today, along with memories of my mother—as an ode to the life she gave me, to the family we were when there were still four of us.

————

It has been a year and a half since you passed, and this album is my way of coming to terms with your absence, of keeping you close through the music we shared. Every track is a reflection of those first days and weeks after you were gone, a way to process the grief and hold on to the memories.

This album is dedicated to you, Mum. 
For the music that filled our home and for the love that filled our lives.
Through these songs, I hope to capture something of the life you lived, the moments we shared, and the strength I found in your memory as I created this project.
May these sounds carry your spirit, just as they carried me in the time since you’ve been gone.

Isabelle Marie Louise Hamard, born Trillot

15 June 1953 – 22 May 2023
Rest In Peace