“No Such Rust is an attempt to map the ever-shifting landscape of grief. It's been 10 years since someone very dear to me took their own life. When you lose someone close to you all you want to know is: when will it stop hurting? And the truth is it never hurts any less. It just hurts less often.

Beginning in droning ambience and taking turns through melancholy electronica, repetitious arps and strings, soaring distortions and rusted, warped piano, No Such Rust is the sound of lingering regret, of the ghosts of things left behind and of things undone” - Veins Full of Static

- No Such Rust

In college I was in several bands that never progresses beyond the hypothetical stage, bands that lived and died entirely in late night beer sodden discussions. He gifted me a band name, said it came to him in a dream. It doesn't really mean anything but sounds somehow rich with the kind of melancholy I wanted to communicate with all the music that never was.

- Ashes in the Sea

After he chose his own exit we spread his ashes in the north sea. 'Spread' being a more elegant word than the reality deserves- the ashes were in a plastic bag and they refused to pour out delicately. Eventually after some shaking they plopped out in one big clump. He always did have great comic timing. Afterwards I said some words I don't remember and then we all got drunk and talked about anything else we could think of.

- Small Acts of Neglect

I could have done more.

I don't blame myself. But the fact remains.

I could have done more.

- An Autobiography in Disappearing Ink

There was a house in which we all spent several summers surrounded by smoke and music and friends. We filled a few old school jotters with jokes and ideas and stoner philosophy. Of his many entries two have always stayed with me. 'Do you remember being careless?' and 'I think we'll miss these days when they're gone.' Even then he was looking longingly at the past and clinging sadly to the present. There wasn't ever a future.

- The Mountain Wants to Die

I had a dream about a mountain that walked. Many tribes lived on the mountain and in its caves. The seers, mystics and holy men of the tribes claimed to be able to speak to the mountain and would tell their people the mountain was walking towards its end - it was ancient and tired and ready to meet oblivion. Once it found it, whatever it looked like, they would all perish. They all had different answers for how to please the mountain, to convince it to go on walking. But it didn’t really hear them.

The track is primarily made up of two constantly cycling synth arps than run through the whole thing playing on different pieces of gear. One remains constant and true - it's built to do that kind of thing. The other isn't but tries to mimic the other arp regardless. Whenever the former filter opens up it sounds the same. The other sounds different each time, trying to find its own sound while hitting the same notes, but never hitting that stuttering note quite right. They chase each other round while smothered with sad strings and raging static swells. Eventually the former drifts away into a reverb drone. The other remains, now a strange echo of the first, not quite making sense now the other has gone. And that's the whole story right there.

- Shelter Object

It takes the kind of strange, arrogant, vainglorious misery one finds in the pits of depression to use an epochal tragedy as a metaphor for one’s situation. The shelter object was the structure that was erected over Chernobyl to try and contain the radiation after the disaster. Due to the extreme conditions and narrow time frame, it was never truly fit for purpose and it deteriorated over time. By 2010 rainwater leaking through the roof was becoming radioactively contaminated before seeping through the reactor's floor into the soil. It was eventually covered over with something safer and built to last in 2017.

- Be Here When the Storm Comes

It's hard to have hope for the future on a planet we're wilfully ruining because we can't collectively figure out a better way of running things than to let wealth creation be our one guiding principle. Some days all you can do is look to the people still here and be thankful you'll be in good company when things begin to truly fall apart, even for us who are used to being insulated from the worst of things.