“Love / Lover / Friend is about the experience of commitment and the confusing dance that takes place finding your roles within it,” says writer/producer Caroline Rose. The track is a sonic departure from 2020’s Superstar, a critically-lauded satire on the price of fame and ambition. “I feel like I’ve really grown up in the last few years. I’ve learned, and am learning still, so much about life and love and all its many forms. When I first wrote this song it felt like the perfect jumping off place to tell a story about love…Not just love for another person but also for myself.”

The marked sonic departure is a return to a much more nascent instinct for Rose. “When I was younger, I remember having so many feelings it felt like I would explode if I didn’t express them somehow. This felt similar to that—very pure and direct.” Between classical and avant-garde elements, low and high fidelity textures, constraint and catharsis, Rose produces Love / Lover Friend as a series of magnetic dipoles that entice and dismay. “I was listening pretty exclusively to vocalists for a while. I definitely tip my cap to Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares but there are also some less obvious references. Sussan Deyhim, Yma Sumac, Sheila Chandra, Huun-Huur-Tu, Hamlet Gonashvili…artists who used their voices in very different ways to great effect. I would listen to them sing and it felt like we were directly connected.” 

At home in her studio, Rose experimented with DIY tape effects, recording techniques and modular synthesis, discovering a palette of new sonic textures. “There is a feeling that comes with recording in a certain way. When you’re dealing with tape, you’re printing to something that decays. There is a life-like element to it. When you work in digital formats, there’s a kind of detachment from that humanness. I wanted it to feel like both.” Love / Lover / Friend will be released on all digital platforms October 26.