I’ve been around long enough to accept that sometimes acts just disappear quietly, without an announcement or farewell release or tour. That’s probably more the norm than the exception. That said, I hold out hope that the radio silence from Maria Lindén of I Break Horses is just part of her pattern of going incommunicado between releases, rather than a permanent departure.

Her last dispatch was two years ago on Facebook paying tribute to Vangelis on the occasion of his passing. The most recent Instagram post looked promising – a short video soundtracked by some new music (I believe a cover I should probably know but cannot identify), but that was back in November 2021. Her Twitter hasn’t been active since May of that year.

She’s gone to ground before, with six years passing between the release of Chiaroscuro and 2020’s Warnings, but that came out back in May 2020 – obviously un-promotable by conventional means – and all press was done before the world shut down. Most things have come back since then, but not them, yet. Also less encouraging is their official website being overrun by AI bots, but also hardly unusual. At least their label still acknowledges them.

So I will sit in quiet hopefulness that they will resurface when ready, and for now, go back to one of my happy places – their 2011 debut Hearts. So as I did three years ago when I posted up the vid for “Winter Beats”, here’s the official video and the accompanying “Bedroom Sessions” live clip, though they’re really just different edits of the same footage. Watch the former for Nordic landscapes and the latter for hands playing instruments.