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On May 17th, Laura J Martin is set to make her return with the of her new album, Prepared via Summer Critics. The album follows the of her 2021 critically acclaimed collaborative album Wyndow, and is Martin's first solo material since 2016. Following the of her 2016 album On The Never, Never, Martin knew that she wanted to take a break from writing and recording music. She moved back to Liverpool, from London, and began an apprenticeship with world renowned flute maker Willy Simmons. InchI was now looking at an instrument I'd been playing all my life at a molecular level. The discipline and repetitiveness of learning a craft freed my mind from thinking about songs for a bit and made me focus instead on some of the toxic chemicals and blow torches used to make the flutes,Inch she says. InchI've never been a particularly mindful person; I'm usually zipping from one thing to the next and this work had a pace of it's own which I had to submit to. As well as making flutes, I was also repairing them, and this was the part I most enjoyed - the process of renewal. In a corny way, I experienced this renewal myself.Inch Following this period, Martin felt inspired to make music again and began setting up her own home studio. InchAround this time, I'd started to listen to Joanna Brouk and the I am the Center compilation of early New Age music on Numero Group. This music was nothing like my own but seemed to extend from the Harmonia records I love and exist outside of the album, gig, tour regime. It was so inspiring and freeing, and I tentatively began to experiment in the studio, with the textures of Brouk's song 'Maggi's Flute' in mind.Inch Working closely with co-producer Iwan Morgan (Euros Childs, Cate Le Bon, Gruff Rhys, Georgia Ruth), the pair found themselves drawn to drum machines that wouldn't stay in time, and a piano with a tuning mind of it's own. InchI rediscove
