In December, much to our dismay, Chairlift announced their disbandment. As they said in a note

“Patrick will be going on to produce records full-time, and Caroline to make music as a solo artist”

Today, Caroline Polachek (who previously put out solo stuff under the name Ramona Lisa), released her new instrumental album, titled Drawing The Target Around The Arrow, via the Creative Independent under her initials CEP. As Polachek told the Creative Independent…

Once in a while, when I needed an ear break from working on whatever I was working on, I’d start a new session to play around with just the sine waves, and would save it. At first, I did it just for myself. I didn’t even take it very seriously. I thought, “This is cool. I want to listen to this.” Once I started accumulating enough of them to listen to a series of them, I realized, “Wait a minute, this is essentially what I want to listen to a lot of the time.”

I started using the recordings just for getting things done. Like getting up in the morning, doing email, going to bed at night, for when I was feeling really stressed out on the train… I’d put them on. I was compelled by how functional it was and it felt strange to me that I’d never really looked at music that way before. I’d always approached music as being a narrative or being aesthetic or having meaning by way of reference or being political, and I’d never looked at it just so cleanly as, “This is useful.” That was very exciting to me.

Naturally I did want to experiment with putting vocals on it because that’s sort of what I do. I tried half the record with vocals on it. I actually recorded it and I realized the whole thing falls apart once you put vocals on it. It becomes distracting. For me, it takes the pleasure out of it because I’m suddenly hearing myself. It loses its conceptual purity.

Polachek also told the Creative Independent…

I’m also knee-deep into the next record that I’m working on, which is a vocal record. In a way, this record feels like an intermission, like a bit of a silence between these two other periods.

Download Drawing The Target Around The Arrow here for free.

Chairlift will play their final shows this April and we really want to go.