Weightbearer by Squalloscope

This is Weightbearer.
Weightbearer is an album of twelve songs, written over the last two and a half years. I recorded most and wrote a few of them in early 2022 in between my half-finished paintings at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. A couple of songs were recorded in my home in Vienna, Austria, some months before. I can’t remember which ones. Life is a blur.

There are ways how we are supposed to do this whole thing as artists. Find the label, publisher, booker. Pay somebody to sell the music to those who tell you what’s cool. The endless popularity contest, the bending and breaking and never breaking even, the big payments for a small chance at visibility. Performing during an ongoing pandemic to sell t-shirts (the main source of income for most musicians these days), knowing that every performance is a health risk but also a mental lifeline for us and our audience. 
Listen, I don’t know what this whole system is supposed to be at this present moment. It all feels wrong and dysfunctional. I am tired and bursting at the seams with song.

I don’t know what I want anymore in this brittle world except make things. I don’t know what I can have. I don’t know what I can ask for. I don’t know what I can take. I don’t know what’s left; it never seems to be enough.
I know this: This is how sound and language exit my body, this is my HOME, in all caps, this is where I belong, this is what I want to do until the end, this is the sound of an enormous wave of grief, life, heartbreak, and the inescapable beauty of it all, moving through me, or vice versa. This is all I have at the present moment. It is called Weightbearer. I just want you to have it. Take it.

 If you find something in this that moves you, let others know. Let me know. Give this album a push. Consider paying for the music. Yell it from the rooftops or into the pillow of your life. If you want, you can have it be the pillow of your life for a little while.

Thank you for your support and heart.
This is yours now.

Anna / Squalloscope

I am a good man.
The amount of fear
I am ok with
is insane.
I love many people
who don't love me.
I don't actually know
if that is true.
This is love.
It is a mass of ice
melting. I can't hold
it and I have nowhere
to put it down.

("Molly Brodak" by Molly Brodak)

Tracklist

1.	Mouthpiece	2:28

2.	Feral	3:33

3.	Mites	3:48

4.	Archives	3:35

5.	Button	3:29

6.	Bones	2:39

7.	Outgoing	3:50

8.	Holy	4:07

9.	Earthship	3:26

10.	Wire	4:22

11.	Machine	1:16

12.	Cup	3:36

Credits

released May 6, 2022

Written, recorded, and mixed by Anna Kohlweis / Squalloscope
Artwork by Anna Kohlweis
Mastered by Michael J Collins

Thank you to Aaron Dall, Andy the Doorbum and Michael J Collins for being my extra ears and providing technical feedback/moral support, and to Jeep Halo for coining the phrase "load-bearing flowers" in a conversation about Warhol.
Thank you to the province of Carinthia / Land Kaernten for letting me live, work, and question everything in Paris for half a year.
Thank you to Sandra Immervoll and Michaela Taschek for your friendship throughout the years.
(may i propose to you, this life / with all its nooks and crannies and highs / and ugly surprises / i got space in mine)

License