Please Keep Shimmering marks Tom VR’s fourth appearance on Seb Wildblood’s ‘All My Thoughts’. The end result of a long, turbulent creative process, it’s an album about perseverance and finding inspiration in the face of monotony and self-doubt.
Work started on Please Keep Shimmering in the aftermath of Films in 2019. Relocating to London via Manchester, Tom juggled his creativity with a 9-5 in customer service. During 2020, over the course of months in isolated lockdown, anonymous abuse from customers on social media platforms skewed the perception of the outside world.
Speaking on the album, Tom states: “It permeates through the screen of your computer and into your life. As you much as you try to disconnect afterwards, doing this every day while isolated in your home, can get strange. I started to lose confidence in what I was doing creatively and why I was doing it.“
“I sometimes envision my creativity like a flame shimmering. I was constantly worried about it fading out. This album is a sonic reminder to anyone that when you feel burned out and exhausted, searching for the spark deep in your chest can feel impossible, but you have to believe it still exists.”
The forthcoming LP soundtracks this moment of internal fracture, but also the experience of coming out on the other side, of reassembling the pieces. Weaving together fragments and textures with signature delicacy, the album moves from pulsing ambient on the aptly named ‘Colour Dance Behind the Eyelids’ to brooding downtempo on ‘Keep Shimmering’.
Ahead of the album release on 15 September, Tom VR has shared a new single ‘Partner’, which you can listen to below.
‘Please Keep Shimmering’ is due September 15th via All My Thoughts and will be available to purchase via Bandcamp.
Tracklist:
1. Soared Straight Through Me
2. Petrichor
3. Colour Dance Behind The Eyelids
4. Partner
5. Keep Shimmering
6. Now The Branch Is Creaking
7. Achemore
8. October
9. Blue Sky Unravel
10. Well Are You Hope?
11. Partner (edit)
12. Soared Straight Through Me (edit)
