11/08/2025
⚡️HEADLINE
Captain's Notes Unmasks “Mask of the Oracle” — A 56‑Minute Downtempo Ghost Story for the Art-Bruised and Algorithm-Weary
Released 11 August 2025 by Night Window Audio. No singles. No compromises. Just texture, truth, and the beautiful mess between.
🎬 INTRODUCTION
Imagine a jazz lounge submerged in 808 drum soundwave rain, its neon sign still flickering while a lone piano dreams in the corner. That’s Mask of the Oracle—the new full-length from Captain’s Notes, built for the headphones of people who refuse to live on autoplay. Downtempo, electronic, hip-hop, experimental—sure—but more importantly, it’s a diary etched in circuitry and memory, a quiet riot against the tyranny of the skip button.
🎧 ABOUT THE MUSIC
Mask of the Oracle is sentimental without begging for sympathy; calm without ever going flatline. The production palette moves from modern, clean edges to lofi grit you can practically taste—like licking the dust off a vinyl crate you shouldn’t have opened. Synths glow like streetlights through fog. Drums lope, sway, then disappear down alleys. Samples whisper in your peripheral vision, never fully resolving, like a conversation you’re certain you had with a stranger you might have loved.
Track by track, the record reads like a map of the internal weather:
Soul Piano: the opener, dreamed after a visitation from a long-ago teacher—hypnotic, deceptively simple, a melody that walks you to the ledge and asks you to look down together.
Midnight Express: a night train with the lights off; the windows become mirrors, and suddenly you’re the scenery.
Childhood Swings: grief and grace braided together, the push-pull of time stitched to a lullaby rhythm.
Scrap Art Mastered and Sample Text Melody: meta and mischievous, nodding to the collage ethic—Basquiat with a sampler, paint under the fingernails of every snare.
💬 BEHIND THE SCENES
Cut in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, the album grew in the witching hours—the uneasy gap between the kettle cooling and the sun remembering its job. Imagine busted mugs, the wire halo of headphones permanently around the neck, and a desk that looks like a synth gave birth on it. The first spark arrives like a prank from the subconscious: a dream about a piano teacher, a melody that won’t stop humming the next morning, fingers finding the keys before coffee can.
There’s tension here—between clean and corroded, between the safe radio sheen of the present tense and the splattered canvases of art history. Captain’s Notes leans into the splatter. The philosophy is simple: texture over trends; confession over hooks; life over the playlist industrial complex. You can hear the tape hiss like a sleeping dog. You can hear the room breathe. You can hear a person choosing art when algorithms are cheaper.
⚡️ARTIST STATEMENT
“I wasn’t chasing a single. I was chasing a feeling I couldn’t shake. This album is me looking in a mirror that talks back—sometimes kind, sometimes cruel. If it’s art, great. If it isn’t, great. Basquiat didn’t wait for permission and neither will I. Soul Piano came in a dream. Midnight Express and Childhood Swings are the ones I keep for myself. If you hear a nod to someone you know, you probably do. That’s the conversation.”
🎧 WHY LISTEN
For Fans Of:
Clams Casino, Shlohmo, Yung Lean, and others
Late-night lo-fi/chill-hop playlists, headphone confessionals, slow cinema soundtracks
💬 Best For:
Painting alone in a too-quiet room; writing at 2 a.m. when the page fights back
Train windows, rainy city walks, gallery setups, or any ritual that requires a pulse and a past
Because:
It refuses radio hypnosis and instead weaponizes texture, restraint, and memory.
It’s a rare, cohesive long-play in a world obsessed with 30-second bait.
It makes nostalgia feel dangerous again—and calm feel alive.
Play it front to back. Ignore the skip button. Let the bass disturb your furniture and your certainty. When the last note fades, sit in the quiet and see what answers.
🚀 RELEASE DETAILS
Artist: Captain’s Notes
Album: Mask of the Oracle
Release Date: 11 August 2025
Duration: 56 minutes
Genre: Downtempo, Electronic, Hip-Hop, Experimental
Studio: Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom
⚠️ DISCLAIMER
No AI tricks, no playlist autopilot—the audio on Mask of the Oracle is 100% Captain’s Notes: composed, played, chopped, and mixed in Sutton‑in‑Ashfield from synths, self‑made recordings, and hand‑picked samples—the hiss and rough edges are intentional. Visual concept may include a light splash of AI. That’s it.
💬 ABOUT THE LABEL
Night Window Audio releases records that don’t ask for permission. We back the art-first, the unformatted, the beautifully stubborn. If the song survives a long night and a bright morning, we stand behind it. Motto: No singles, just signals.
Contact:
Press and promos via label socials. DMs open. Bring curiosity. [email protected]
🚀 SIGNOFF
Mask of the Oracle by Captain’s Notes. Out 11 August 2025. Brought to you by Night Window Audio—for those who still listen with the lights off