Hadley Roe 'The Inner Garden' CD

6-Panel Digipak CD [numbered]
Glass-mastered, silkscreen printed CD housed in a 6-panel, 300g satin cardstock Digipak. Clear cd tray. Numbered. Shrinkwrapped. Pressed and printed in Canada. Edition of 200.

Hadley Roe – The Inner Garden (PITP, 2025)

On her debut for Past Inside the Present, UK-based Hadley Roe performs a vivid sonic alchemy with a modest setup of electric guitar, synth, and software – but The Inner Garden’s beating heart lies in the immense healing force that Roe summons from the quiet corners of her countryside home and its surroundings. She is publicly candid about her ongoing struggles with mental health, and the album’s eight pieces draw much of their inspiration from unresolved trauma, self-imposed isolation, and intensive personal reflection. At turns the results are melancholy, blissful, shadowy, and comforting, but above all, The Inner Garden overflows with richly nuanced beauty.

Opening piece, “The First Day”, offers a warm embrace in a foggy shroud, setting a serene tone with delicate harmonic details along the fringes of a soft drone. The glowing low end of “Summer Rain” crests under its main chords, while a breathy whisper breezes back and forth, flickering glitches emerge alongside a solemn piano line, and the piece shapeshifts like a charcoal sky, illuminated by rumbling bursts of heat lightning. “No One Ever Touched Me Before You” navigates a corridor by candlelight, its mix favoring a womb-like sense of closeness, until streaks of velvety synth build into one of the album’s most engrossing crescendos, highlighting Roe’s ability to use patience as a deeply affecting technique.

The cover of The Inner Garden is centered on a young woman at an open window, gazing out on a lush landscape steeped in pale celadon, a perfect complement to music so well-suited for lucid daydreaming. Previous albums feature similarly enigmatic, symbolic imagery – an outstretched hand in a fuchsia haze (Softly Disappear), or a close-up curl of sunlit whiteness (All That’s Left) – evoking fragments of fond memories that might appear in a moment of lamentation. “Forgiveness” embodies this scene poignantly, as the lilt of birdsong surrounds an aching, lo-fi melodic motif that recalls Jon Brion’s landmark score to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Title track, “The Inner Garden”, features a set of hypnotic piano chords that fall across a field of sustained, orchestral grandeur, as subtle filters bring the arrangement into focus and everything ripples with textured tonality. According to Roe, the track is “a meditation on living in the present moment, and not letting past trauma or future worries ruin everything; it's about seeking solace in an imaginary place, where I can shut the world out and have full control of my surroundings.”

The well-titled “Tears Had To Fall” is haloed by bittersweetness, distilled into a synth loop that would make Angelo Badalementi weep, while the exemplary “I Just Want To Get Better” sounds like a sunrise through a veil of lace. Its interwoven details and sparse, bell-like adornments flow into a transportive field recording that places the listener beside a babbling brook at the peak of spring – a touching reminder of both the transitory and the eternal.

Closing with the succinct, airy coda, “Comes To A Head”, The Inner Garden leaves profound tranquility in its wake, true to its creator’s motivations. Roe notes, “I tried writing conventional verse/chorus songs, but discovered that I can express myself much better through wordless, intuitive, textural music; I started composing ambient arrangements mainly to cope with, and understand, my own mind, finding it to be one of the only things that calms me down and alleviates my chronic anxiety.” Through the many hues and latitudes of these songs, we are lucky to experience the rare joy and reprieve of this sacred place with her, if only for a brief, bewitching moment.


Praise for All That’s Left:

“An empathetic take on ambient music...tenderly constructed and heartfelt pieces.”
-Stationary Travels

“Beautiful and inviting; an aural landscape that becomes what we need it to be in the moment.”
-Foxy Digitalis

“A garden of ease... this music helps me feel less alone.”
-The Far Out Fox

Credits:
Written, recorded, and produced by Hadley Roe. Mastered at Ambient Mountain House by James Bernard. Cover photography by Hadley Roe. Layout and design by zakè. Marketing, distribution, and compact disc copyright: Past Inside the Present. Pressed, manufactured, and assembled in Canada. © 2025 Past Inside the Present. ℗ 2025 Past Inside the Present Publishing (BMI). This is PITP64. All rights reserved. pastinsidethepresent.com / pitp.us