HEAVY
Lost Keys: Intimate Sessions #1
Warning: Strong Language
Introduction
This session came from a place of darkness and unexpected hope.
It was a time when music became my refuge - the only thing that let me pause, breathe, and simply exist. These Track Notes are a reflection on that journey, sharing where I was, what I felt, and how this collection became a tether back to myself.
Welcome to the beginning of something deeply personal….
Behind the Mix
(15-20 minute read)
Where was I when this mix started forming?
It began at a low point if I'm honest; “what is the fucking point, of any of this?”
Honestly, I was in a pretty dark place — one of those quiet moments that doesn’t feel peaceful at all, just heavy. I felt almost immobilised, like the emotional weight I’d been carrying had finally become physical. Tired. Worn out. Disengaged.
I had hit a point where even the music that normally lifts me couldn’t reach me. I was unsettled and restless, but also stuck.
I remember being on a flight back home after a long work week. Sydney to London, with a stop in Singapore. I’d decided to stay awake on the first leg, so I pulled out my laptop and started sifting through tracks in Rekordbox.
I lifted out about 50–60 pieces that carried a kind of soft melancholy; a bit of rhythm, but not too much. As I went through them, I noticed the ones that made me pause, even for a second, and look inward.
Those were the ones I held onto, the ones I felt like I needed right then.
When I finally got home, that playlist just sat there untouched. But one night, I found myself dipping back into it — not with any intention to create, just to sit in stillness.
Very quickly, I realised the beats and rhythms weren’t working for me. They weren’t giving me the safety they usually would.
So I ended up at the piano, almost by instinct, poking around at soft tones and stretched-out chords, trying to connect with something that didn’t overwhelm me.
That’s really where it started… me, the piano, and a handful of stripped-back sounds that made me feel something. As I blended things together, I slowly felt the pull back toward rhythm and bass, almost like I was finding my way back to myself.
That was the arc - from stillness into movement. It became the unexpected backbone of the mix.
It had purpose long before I realised it did.
What mood or moment does this mix capture?
It captures that exact middle ground between falling apart and holding yourself together.
That space where you’re not quite breaking, but you’re definitely not OK either. It’s the mood of sitting in darkness and slowly noticing the faintest bit of hope — even if it’s barely there.
It holds the feeling of trying desperately to connect with anything when you’re terrified you might not be able to feel at all. And sometimes the only thing you can feel is sadness or pain, and while it’s not ideal, it’s still something.
At the time, I needed something to steady me, something to keep me from sinking or drifting away.
Looking back, the mix captures my attempt to stay present, even when the music that usually grounds me wasn’t working. It shows the stubbornness in me — my refusal to give up on finding that connection.
I found it through ambient piano, just like when I was younger. That’s where the stillness and support surfaced, allowing emotions I’d been burying to come up again.
And the transition, from ambient calm back into familiar rhythm and bass, marks a kind of return.
A way of saying, I made it back. I found myself again….
What track or sound is the emotional key to the mix?
The emotional key to HEAVY is the soft, slow-paced, lingering tones. The ones that don’t push or rush you, the ones that take their time.
Those single-note piano sounds echo the music I used to escape into when I was younger. No big melodic sweeps, no dramatic movements, just notes and chords that sit long enough for you to breathe again.
Those tones anchor the entire session. They show up throughout the piece, giving it that delicate, almost organic identity.
Even when rhythm and bass enter, the piano stays present, sometimes quietly, sometimes taking over completely before giving way again.
I think it’s that interplay between stillness and movement that holds the emotional thread of the mix together.
In terms of track, specifically?
There is an unreleased Fred Again bootleg remix that I used in this titled “Billie”, where there is a sample of a Billie Eilish interview, where she repeats the phrase “I’m not ok”.
It was how I was feeling, on the inside. I was not OK, despite me saying I was and when I stumbled across this, it was the rhythm towards the last third of the track that picked me up and made me think “yeah, I'm really not fucking ok”, but it was lifting me up from it. Felt like it had a place early on and then for a piano reprise at the end.
What memory or feeling does this mix take you back to instantly?
It takes me straight back to my younger self — the kid who used music to shut out the chaos and slow the world down. Sitting alone at the piano, unseen and unheard, but finding comfort in the notes anyway.
There’s a voice that appears throughout the piece, almost like that younger version of me. Sometimes it feels like he’s acknowledging who I am today and how far I’ve come. Other times, it’s me speaking back — telling him he wasn’t broken, he wasn’t worthless, he wasn’t wrong for feeling the way he did.
Acceptance is the thread here.
It’s helped me draw a clearer boundary between taking responsibility for how I treat others, and recognising that the way I treat myself, the criticism, the hardness, wasn’t something I was born with.
It was learned.
Absorbed from people who couldn’t offer the care or understanding I needed. Learned from those who should have known better — who should have nurtured rather than diminished.
I am talking about my school teachers here. The very people we entrust with our children every day.
Now, don’t get me wrong — 99.9% of teachers are wonderful. But in my case, I’m talking about a few bad apples… or, as I like to call them, cunts.
Sorry, I know... But let’s be honest. This is raw, expressive work, and sometimes honesty isn’t pretty. They crushed my spirit. Made me feel worthless. I was a child…
And even now, as a fully grown adult; a husband, a father, a good life, a loving family, a career - that old feeling of worthlessness still lingers.
So yes. They were cunts…. Huge, massive cunts.
This session pulls me right back into the past — school, rejection, feeling small.
But, it reframes it.
It reminds me that I’m not broken, that I have value and purpose.
It’s deep. Heavy, in fact. Which is exactly how it got its name.
What was happening in my life where these tracks and sounds mattered most?
I was in a period where everything felt unstable, like I was losing control.
Things were happening in my life and in the lives of people I love that I couldn’t fix or stop, and the consequences were painful. It hurt them, and it hurt me.
My mind was relentless; looping scenarios, fears, what-ifs, awake or asleep, it didn’t care. Worry, anxiety, fear, sadness, loss, pain… it was all there, constantly. Lovely.
These tracks mattered because they gave me the only thing I didn’t have at the time: stillness. A point of rest. A moment where I didn’t need to perform or pretend.
Sometimes stillness isn’t for processing, it’s for surviving. For regulating. For rebuilding capacity when you’ve hit the edge of what you can carry.
It’s enough.
What might this mix mean to me in 5 or 10 years time?
Now there’s a question...
I think it’ll become a reminder. Not of the darkness itself, but of the fact that something honest came out of it. Something meaningful. Something true.
It might show me how far I’ve come. Or it might simply remind me that even at my lowest, I created something that held me together. That I didn’t give up. That hope existed, even when I couldn’t feel it or recognise it at the time.
Either way, I think it will stand as proof of resilience.
A marker of the moment I found my way back to myself.
It will be a great piece to look back on in 10 years from now and just see what its says to me then?
What truth did this mix pull out of me that I wasn’t expecting?
Wow, I mean it showed me just how powerful music really is in my life.
Not just as something I enjoy, but as something I instinctively reach for when everything feels too heavy. I’ve always loved music, always had a broad and open taste, but I didn’t realise until this moment that turning to music isn’t a choice I make… it’s a reflex.
It’s the thing I run to without thinking whenever I’m low or overwhelmed and need safety or comfort.
What surprised me was that this time, it didn’t work. Normally, it’s the one thing that helps me reset, but instead, I felt nothing.
And if music were just a tool, I would’ve tried it, seen it wasn’t helping, and moved on to something else. That’s what I would’ve expected from myself.
But I didn’t. Something in me kept searching. Not out of logic or intent, but instinct. Desperately trying to find the sound that would connect with me again.
Only when I listened back later did I realise what had actually happened. I could hear the journey in the mix. It was like a map of where I’d been emotionally, each shift in tone showing the moment I was reaching, trying, adjusting, refusing to give up on finding something that would hold me.
That subconscious, instinctive pull toward sound, the need for it, the truth of it, was something I didn’t fully see until after the fact.
And maybe the biggest truth is this: these mixes aren’t just mixes. They’re honest fragments of my life stitched together through music.
Not a formula. Not something I churn out. But snapshots. Real, vulnerable, messy, human.
That’s what I learned, and that’s what I’ve grown to love about this whole process.
Technical & Production
(10-15 minute read)
Production
Heavy didn’t begin with a concept. It began with a feeling I couldn’t shake.
These tracks weren’t chosen. They surfaced. One by one. Quietly, instinctively. I didn’t sit down to build a mix like I’ve said before, I sat down because my mind was spiralling and I needed something to hold onto.
This session grew out of that need.
The opening pieces, “Nathan”, “Degree of Change”, the VOCES8 version of “Meant To Be by” James Heather, all sit in that suspended emotional space where nothing has a shape yet.
They’re soft. Fragile. They don’t ask for much in return but somehow take all of your attention.
That’s where Heavy started. Not with rhythm, but with breath and space. With notes that felt like they were barely holding themselves up, and somehow holding me up at the same time.
I used a Roland LX-5 digital piano as the starting point. Just a few chords, some long tones, nothing demanding. When I found the music that captured that stillness, I used the WAV recording feature to pull it onto my laptop and into Ableton.
That’s where I began weaving it across the session. Some tracks already had piano so the layers slipped in easily. Others were a little more deliberate and required some tuning and mastering to get the pitches and volume just right so as to not overcrowd and start to demand more from the listener.
As more layers entered, the sound didn’t get bigger. It just became true. A real feeling you could almost touch.
Niklas Paschburg’s “Anew” shifts something early on. A sense of movement, but careful, like testing the ground before stepping fully. There is the perfect sample here at the start that whispers, in a slightly muffled voices “What’s this, some new kind of dance” almost as if to symbolise first movement, unfamiliar movement post-stillness.
Then the unreleased “I’m Not Ok” and my own sketches appear, and that’s where the emotional thread tightens. Those pieces don’t sit back. They speak. They reflect. They poke at old wounds. They drag whatever’s underneath up to the surface whether you’re ready or not.
Most of the transitions weren’t planned. They sort of revealed themselves in the moment while recording.
“Desert Island Duvet”, ”Berwyn”, “I Had It All”, “Sonder” These all act like a soft return to rhythm without losing the weight of the earlier moments. You can hear the shift happening slowly. The pulse returning. My body waking up. The fog thinning but not gone.
“Sonder” and especially “I Had It All” felt really nostalgic in a strange way, like they carried a familiarity even if you’d never heard them before. Very comforting. Almost liken to a hug just at the right moment.
By the time “That’s Alright” enters, the mix has grown into something with its own gravity. There’s a backbone again. A pulse you can lean into. But it still carries that reflective core the early tracks established.
“Rose” comes in as a partial original composition, built from a Ólafur Arnalds starting point, which I improvised over, then layered with a few words of reassurance. Almost like accepting that rhythm doesn’t erase sadness. It anchors it. Gives it shape.
The closing run with “Mustafa”, “Eyelar”, and the piano-only version of “I’m Not Ok” brings everything back to the place we started, full circle. But, it isn’t the same place anymore.
This is after the journey. A different kind of stillness. The kind that shows you what you’ve been carrying and lets you finally put some of it down. A quiet landing.
A breath you didn’t realise you were holding.
It was just enough for now. Just enough.
Technical; Equiptment, Recording & Mastering:
Heavy was recorded in one take. However, getting to that one take took weeks of messing around in the dark, finding the fight moments and feelings that guided the sound and the transitions.
Without thinking about it specifically, instinctively figuring out through felt senses what actually felt right in the moment. The final run might sound smooth, but it lived through a lot of trial and error before it ever became a single, uninterrupted recording.
I used a mix of gear. The XDJ-XZ was the backbone of the recording, paired with the Roland LX-5 for all the piano layers that anchor the emotional side of the mix.
The DDJ-XP2 sampler pad came in when I needed small textures or moments of emphasis, little details that don’t draw attention to themselves but add weight if you’re listening closely.
A lot of the experimenting happened on the DDJ-400. That was the “casual” setup — the one I’d use late at night or in those restless moments to test transitions, mess with ideas, and chase the feeling without overthinking it.
Some days I didn’t touch this at all, I didnt feel like I needed it. But then other days I’d get completely locked in, almost obsessive, because I needed the calm it gave me. It wasn’t a linear process; it followed my mood more than any plan.
Once the one-take recording was done, everything moved into Ableton. That’s where I handled the quiet technical side of things; from fixing levels, balancing volumes, shaping the dynamics, and transposing MIDI from piano on to my laptop where needed to let the piano sit naturally with tracks that weren’t originally in the same key.
Mastering wasn’t something I put too much time and effort in for this, since it was sort of lo-fi deliberately so liked the muffled textured and saturated basslines. It feels distorted, almost fractured like its not a polish edit - becuse it’s not. Its a lived experience, its got some miles on it.
It was about clarity. Warmth. Space. Keeping the emotional core untouched. It needed to not be perfect.
The whole thing stretched across about two months — not full-time work, just creating when the feeling allowed it, stepping away when it didn’t, coming back when I needed it again. Heavy grew in the gaps, in the stillness, in the spirals, and in the moments of breath.
And when it finally clicked into place, it clicked all at once.
The Moment
(10 minute read)
Introduction
At its core, this moment is expressing something I didn’t fully see until I lived it: You can be surrounded by chaos, movement, responsibility, expectation — and still feel like you’re falling apart in silence.
The city, the airport, the sprinting, the delays, the weather - all of it mirrors the emotional state you’re in. It’s not just happening around you, it’s happening to you and inside you at the same time.
The story is saying:
You are overwhelmed and under-supported.
You are trying to fix things you can’t fix.
You are carrying more weight than one person should.
You feel like you’re constantly behind, constantly failing.
You’re scared you might break, and scared that breaking would confirm the things you already fear about yourself.
And then, music becomes the only stable ground. The only thing that acknowledges the storm without demanding anything from you.
This mix didn’t come from creativity, it came from survival.
What surprised me most wasn’t that I turned to music to cope. I’ve always done that. It was how instinctive it was — how, even when nothing else worked, I kept searching for the sound that matched what I couldn’t say out loud.
And I didn’t do that consciously. It was muscle memory. Survival. A map drawn in real time.
Listening back, I can hear the honesty in it. This mix is not just a playlists. They’re snapshots of a moment, a feeling, a truth I couldn’t articulate any other way. Proof that even when I don’t understand what’s happening to me, the music does. And it leaves me a trail.
The takeaway from this moment is simple:
“I didn’t know how deep this ran until I heard it. And now I do.”
The Moment
It starts in a city that isn’t yours.
The streets are slick with rain, the neon reflections flickering like taunting reminders that you’re out of place. Bags too heavy. Shoes too tight. Your wet through from the rain. Flights delayed. Airport busy with people drifting in and out.
Every thought turns into a calculation: how do I fix this? But deep down, you know — the solutions aren’t yours to figure out. You can only try, stumble, run, and hope the world cooperates. It usually doesn’t.
The umbrella you forgot feels like a metaphor for everything. The shuttle leaves in two minutes, but it’s three minutes away. You sprint. Slip. Dodge. Feel every step like it’s weighing on you.
The cold stings. Anxiety pulses through your chest. The world keeps spinning, faster and faster, and you’re barely keeping up
You start to wonder if this is just life now. A constant game of catch-up. Every missed connection, every red light, every wrong turn a reminder that maybe you’re not built for this.
That maybe, just maybe, you’re the problem.
You board the flight, finally. Alone, not by choice, but maybe it’s what you need. Headphones in, window seat. The city shrinks beneath you, lights smudged through rain.
Up here, everything feels still but nothing is quiet. Your thoughts start to spiral; the things you couldn’t fix, the people you couldn’t help, the words you wish you’d said, the words you wish you hadn’t said.
You keep running simulations in your head, over and over, searching for a version where it all turns out right. But it never does.
And then the voices start up, faint but familiar. Difficult. Failure. Not enough….
You thought you’d outgrown them, but they’ve just been waiting for the right silence to creep back in.
The music soft, it grabs hold of you, its like the world suddenly freezes as you’re lifted higher and higher, further and further away.
You stare out at the clouds, and for a moment you believe it. Those voices.
That maybe they were right. That maybe you’ve just been pretending all along. And it hits hard. Like turbulence that doesn’t show on the radar.
You tell yourself to hold it together, to not let it show. You look around the cabin, everyone calm, sipping wine, reading, sleeping. You wonder, how do they make it look so easy. How they seem to belong here when you’re just trying not to come apart.
The music in your ears carries on. Slow, fragile, almost breaking, becomes the only thing holding you together. Each note lands softly, like it knows you’re close to the edge.
You look out the window, clouds rolling beneath you like waves. For a moment, you imagine what it would feel like to disappear into them, just to rest.
To stop thinking. To stop tormenting yourself.
You picture yourself from above, small, weightless, quiet. The world carrying on below, untouched. It’s not a wish to leave, it’s the exhaustion of staying.
A longing for peace, even if it means absence.
Then, somewhere in the fog, a sound shifts. A note stretches longer, warmer. The texture changes. The rhythm begins to return.
You feel it in your chest before you notice it in your ears. A pulse, a small reminder that you’re still tethered to something real. The bass begins to rise, like breath returning after being held too long.
The world outside brightens. The clouds part. The light sharpens into something familiar, streets, roads, outlines of home. You can feel yourself coming back. The ache loosens its grip.
By the time the wheels hit the tarmac, you’re breathing again. You move through the motion, bags, taxis, doors (keys, hopefully) until finally, home.
Shoes off. Coat hung up. The quiet hum of the house wraps around you like a sigh of relief.
The chaos turns to rhythm. The rhythm turns to peace. The music fades, but it leaves something behind. Not answers, but presence. Grounding.
You look around. Family. Warmth. Safety, and you realise: maybe you were never really gone.
Maybe that city, that flight, that storm was just where your mind went when the world got too heavy.
Maybe the journey wasn’t out there at all — it was in here.
The distance you travelled was the space between breaking and holding on.
Music took you there. And music brought you back.
Final Reflection
Music became the tether when everything else felt unsteady. The city, the delays, the chaos — all of it mirrors that internal weight, but each note carried me back, slowly, deliberately, to presence.
Heavy isn’t about solving anything; it’s about returning — to stillness, to home, to grounding, to the quiet reminder that even when we feel lost, we can always come back.
Track List
Here is the track list used for the composition:
Nathan - Fred Again (feat Lost Keys Piano Edit)
Degree of Change – KMRU
Meant To Be – James Heather (VOCES8 Recording)
Anew – Niklas Paschburg
I'm Not Ok (Billie) – Fred Again (Original, Unreleased Rexmix)
Inspired 01 - Lost Keys
Inspired 02 - Lost Keys
Berwyn – Fred Again (Kennington Tube)
Desert Island Duvet – Mike Skinner, feat. Fred Again (Berwyn Edit)
I Had It All – DJ Poolboi
Sonder – Barry Can't Swim
That's Alright (Unreleased) – Fred Again
Rose 01 – Lost Keys (feat Ólafur Arnalds)
Mustafa (Southbank) – AL3 Piano Version – Fred Again
Eyelar – Fred Again (Stamford Street)
Billie (I'm Not Ok) - Fred Again
Other music recommendations / references
Piano / Classical - Here are a few classical pieces of music that probably take me back to when I was around 10-11 years old. These were pieces that from the first time i heard them the landed with some kind of profound significance. I cant really explain, because it was so long ago but whatever it was rooted deep within me, which means to this day if i hear these pieces they connect immediately. almost subconsciously.
Chopin Nocturne in C-sharp minor
Elgar Cello Concerto E-minor
Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
Julia Igonina & Maxim Emelyanychev: Pierrot's Funeral
