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I had forgotten, somehow, that moonlight is the reflection of sunlight. The moon is so iconic, it had become it's own celebrity to me. Sometimes individualization is like that. We are praised to become our own identity-singular shining orbs. This record is a reminder to cherish openly that which reflects off and onto me. A reminder that stone orbs only become meaningful moons when they experience the gravity and light of others. - Jennifer CastleIn autumn 2009, for the first time, monarch butterflies, known for their extensive annual North American migrations, emerged from their cocoons in outer space, onboard the International Space Station, part of a NASA experiment on the effects of microgravity on Lepidoptera. They dried their wings to fly nearer to the moon than their species had ever done before.Ten years later, in autumn 2019, Jennifer Castle sat at home in her quiet coastal kitchen in Ontario, windows open to the insects and the wind and the reflection of the moon on Lake Erie-her host of muses-and recorded nine moon-suffused songs. It was monarch season again on Earth, and Jennifer was inspired to Inchsee the wings in everything.Inch Now, a year later, we have Monarch Season, an album as delicate and diaphanous as it's namesake creature. Although created half a year pre-pandemic, Castle deliberately pursued a minimalist, homebound, and solitary process that represented, for her musical practice, a radical reduction of scale, coupled with a telescopic expansion of scope. InchI was happy,Inch she reflects, Inchto write this simple suite on these big complexities.Inch The follow-up to her acclaimed 2018 record Angels of Death, Monarch Season is Castle's private experiment on the effects of microgravity-in this context, increased immediacy, intimacy, domesticity, simplicity, brevity, and directness-on her music. As a distillation of the formal, compositional, and
