Written by Anika Maculangan Like specks of sunlight huddled in one dark corner, “quarters” read like that old photo booth picture, that long-lost receipt, or that tattered candy wrapper at the bottom of your pocket. The tracks, if anything, feel homesick for another universe. Infused with ethereal accents and soft imprints of shoegaze, certain tracks, especially “2nd room”, a lengthy 7-minute song, are perfect for spacing out in the middle of Maginhawa, as a flurry of pollution fills the lungs with something ambivalent. Despite its longevity, through drifting and spacey lyric composition, the song seems to defy all odds of time. This seems to be the case for &ND, even with other tracks like the remastered version of “Best of Luck” which boasts a duration of 5 minutes, which somehow, one way or another, manages to distort our concept of how long a moment lasts. It seems like making something fulfilling amongst a sea of boredom, like when you’re in your living room sofa, and you turn the TV on to satiate the room with sound, just to reckon with the emptiness. Quarters is meant for those who were aficionados to the likes of Ourselves the Elves, amidst the height of Armi Millare, when everything circumvented within the seams of moonstruck yet hard-boiled indie ballads. Blurry images layered over thick pastures of grain, the EP recovers what was lost prior to the pandemic — that hypermnesia for hopecore edits and patch tattoos, riddled with a plethora of late nights by the fluorescent glow of Angel’s Burger. The EP, finely drawn in its faded outfit, ceases to ever decline when it comes to the long-standing culture of diaries and sundried flowers plastered against cigarette butts. Therefore, ultimately, makes the statement that while we are moving forward, we are still, at the end of the day, figments of an old cast, begging to break loose. It goes without saying that a throwback like quarters, gives a nod to ‘those days’ of once being a student and stocking up on caffeine, all the while tracing back one’s roots amongst the tangled cords of an earphone. More fluid in their approach to genre, this indefinite notion provides the ability to delve into other sonic characters in the future. “quarters”, unlike other projects loosely borrowed from shoegaze, touches on the genre lightly, permitting more capacity for revisiting its tonalities within their own terms — these terms that immerse its toes into dream pop, bringing more uplifting, effervescent qualities into their sound. The EP is a stand-in for sensations of a lost memory, as it sings “If I were old, old to stay/I would love to lay and just wait”, exemplifying what it means to have a doubled intuition for recollection toward an echo, acting as a souvenir to what led us here. “quarters,” in its stillness, flows with reverb and resonance that can only match the waves, one sweep lesser of a tide. &ND feels like a reactionary project to the post-Megumi Acorda generation, amplifying that accent of unmistakable transcendence. SUPPORT THE ART & THE ARTIST: