These are the songs that never found their place.
Too hesitant for "Shades And Colours", too dimmed for "Colours And Shades". Yet they lingered.
"Remains: Colours And Shades" gathers what was left behind. Each track is named after a hue, a pigment not to define a feeling, but to paint one. These are not direct expressions, but emotional reflections: fragments of love, doubt, nostalgia, and stillness, each refracted through colour.
Together, they form a palette of what almost was, of moments too delicate or dissonant to belong elsewhere, now given space to breathe.
They don’t resolve, and they don’t proclaim. They simply exist, quiet, unfinished, and honest.

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Remains: Colours And Shades

Shades And Colours is the debut album by Claire’s Prelude, a concept album tracing one year of emotion through evolving sound. Each track captures a moment, a memory, or a feeling tied to a single person whose presence shaped the course of everything.

What begins in simplicity and introspection unfolds into a complex blend of electronic textures, progressive rock structures, and ambient depth. Joy, longing, detachment, depression, hope, they’re all here, in songs that grow, loop, fracture, and return.

Some colours glow. Some shades fall. And through them, Shades And Colours offers an intimate portrait of what it means to feel deeply, even when no one else is listening.

Shades And Colours

The aftermath of feeling.
"Colours And Shades" is both a continuation and a culmination, the final descent into the emotional architecture first sketched in "Shades And Colours", and quietly sustained in "Remains: Colours And Shades". Across twenty-seven tracks, shades and colours mirroring each other once more, this album traces not opposites, but possibilities: how emotion can splinter, soften, evolve.

Each song is a transformation of something familiar. The joy, sorrow, longing, and silence of the past aren’t gone; they’ve simply changed hues. This is the sound of aftermath, not as collapse, but as reflection: the inward pull that comes when the storm passes, when love remains, but differently.

This is not a resolution. This is what survives it.

Colours And Shades

A collection of quiet landscapes and fleeting moments, this album drifts between shadow and moonlight, stillness and motion. Music box lullabies, nocturnal guitar pieces, and drifting synth textures weave through an ambient core, carrying traces of folk, neoclassical, and dream pop along the way.

Each track feels like a clearing you step into, some dim and hushed beneath the trees, others glowing faintly with silver light, yet all connected by a thread of intimacy and atmosphere. It’s an album to wander through slowly, letting each sound linger in the air like breath in the midnight forest.

"Whispers" Suite

"Vernal" is a deeply personal and emotional journey, exploring the complexities of love, longing, and internal conflict. A journey that starts in frustration and moves through moments of self-reflection, "Vernal" introduces the concept of flowers as symbolic milestones in this emotional transformation, using them as titles for some of the tracks. While the flowers serve as a metaphor for growth, blooming, and restraint, the work is not exclusive to this album nor this first draft—it's a glimpse into an evolving concept, one that may extend beyond this initial attempt.

With themes of quiet grief, unexpressed emotions, and the delicate nature of personal connections, "Vernal" invites listeners on an introspective journey, rich with complexity. The tracks pulse with energy and harmony, weaving through layered emotional landscapes. Each composition carries intricate, shifting harmonies that reflect both inner turmoil and a tender desire to communicate what cannot be said. The music is at once delicate and forceful, capturing the push and pull of unspoken love.

The listener is taken through a subtle, yet poignant exploration of what it means to offer something beautiful—whether an unspoken gift, a song unsung, or a quiet, unacknowledged gesture—while also grappling with the unfulfilled wish of being able to express admiration or praise. "Vernal" speaks to the space between what is and what might have been: a love not fully realised, a recognition withheld, and yet, in that absence, a profound, almost cathartic longing.

Vernal (First Draft)

Restlessness beneath still skies.
"Terre de sienne brûlée" simmers with quiet frustrationnot loud, not chaotic, but insistent. A pulse that won’t settle. Its foundation lies in dual bass lines and erratic shifts in rhythm, mimicking the feeling of needing to move forward while trapped in place.
The melody never resolves, it wanders, stumbles, pushes ahead. Somewhere within, a synth whispers in code, spelling a name that refuses to fade.
Like watching the same stretch of desert blur past for miles, knowing something waits beyond, if only the world would change.

Terre de sienne brûlée

Everything begins in silence.
"Blanc titane" is the page before the story, the first breath before sound. It holds the quiet tension of potential, the weight of all the things that could be said, felt, written.
Built on a single, looping motif, the piece moves without motion, slowly growing not in shape, but in presence. A blank slate doesn’t ask what’s next, it simply waits, wide and bright, for something to begin.

Blanc titane

A single night, vivid as a lifetime.
"Orange" is a pulse of fleeting romance, born from one brief encounter and everything it left behind: the shimmer of a smile, the mystery in a glance, the perfect stranger written into memory like a myth.
Its electronic textures build slowly, evolving like the moment itself, familiar at first, then suddenly luminous, almost surreal. A park at night becomes a dream in motion, coloured in synth and light. Some loves are too quick to catch. This one lingers, dancing just out of reach.

Orange

Melancholy in its softest shade.
"Noir" opens the album not with weight, but with shadows, those that settle over the memories never made, the moments imagined but never lived. Each note is sparse, plucked gently, like reaching for something that isn’t there.
Its rhythm drifts between shapes, long tones, syncopations, and uneven pulses, layering into an ambient drift that never bursts, only breathes. A beginning painted in absence, dim and delicate.

Noir

Joy without reason, movement without direction.
Caught between tension and release, "Jaune citron" doesn’t search for clarity, it dances in the unknown. A looping motif anchors the song like a thought that won’t leave, while each section spins off unpredictably: shifting shapes, an improvised burst, then back again.
There’s something almost lighthearted in its indifference, like standing in a crowded room, half-listening, half-lost in your own rhythm. Not certain where to go next, and, for a moment, not needing to know.

Jaune citron

The world shifted the day she appeared.
"Elation" captures the moment everything changed, the light after long grey. Built with open, rising structures and warm textures, this track reflects the feeling of being seen for the first time, of waking up into something new.
It doesn’t reach for happiness, it is happiness, brief and overwhelming. The first real colour in a long time, turned into shade.

Second Shade (Elation)

A song made to please, but not to feel.
Written with the hope of reaching further, "Insipid" was born from the desire to be heard, to be successful, to be enough, for her. Built with a classic house structure and a single repeating motif, it grows louder, more textured, more polished… but something’s missing.
It sounds like ambition. It moves like a promise. But beneath the brightness, there’s an emptiness. A song that doesn’t sound like its writer.

Third Colour (Insipid)

The spark you can't explain, only feel.
"Passion" pulses with the energy of a memory that lingers without reason. Built around a house-inspired structure, it carries a coded melody hidden in the notes, passed between layers of sound like a secret.
There’s desire here, and nostalgia, and something stranger: a rush that feels urgent but undefined. The beat builds, modulates, returns. A feeling that burns bright, even in confusion.

Second Colour (Passion)

The beginning, though it never meant to be.
"Whispers" opens the album with quiet repetition and unresolved emotion, a minimalist conversation between two melodies that circle, mirror, and drift. Built in the stillness left behind by someone’s sudden absence, the track captures the quiet ache of something that didn’t happen.
Electronic textures imitate guitar tones, creating an atmosphere of reflection and restraint. A first step taken without knowing it was one.

First Shade (Whispers)

Time slows, and waiting turns to weight.
"Languor" drifts in circles of growing impatience, the warmth of hope beginning to fade into frustration. Its pacing is slow, deliberate, almost heavy, like thoughts caught in a loop with no resolution.
The sound pulls inward, blurring motion with stillness. This is where dreams begin to ache, and still nothing moves.

Third Shade (Languor)

A gift made of hope and imagination.
Built on a looping bass motif, "Bouquet" gathers fragments of love not yet real, memories that never happened, feelings shaped by waiting. Two melodies intertwine in counterpoint, separate but harmonizing, drifting apart only to find each other again.
Electronic and echoing with rock textures, this track is a symbol of what could be: a bouquet not of flowers, but of moments dreamed into being.

First Colour (Bouquet)

After the storm and silence, there is only distance. This song opens the final arc of the album, not with triumph or clarity, but with the soft, persistent belief that something must lie ahead. A horizon, unnamed and undefined, but still there.

Born from the shadow of everything lost, "Horisont" begins to trace the outline of something new. The melody emerges like morning mist, hesitant, thin, but moving. It carries the weight of the last collapse without being crushed by it. This is not hope in its purest form; it’s the flicker that precedes it, the faint light before conviction.

A new theme appears, one that will echo through the next songs like a quiet vow. There’s no clear structure, the song drifts, turns, and wanders, but always with its eyes on the line where sky meets sea. Its electronic textures swell and dissolve like memory, pulling forward not with certainty, but with need.

Twenty-Third Colour (Horisont)

A horizon that doesn’t move.
"Ahir" opens the album in reflection: a glance backwards, not out of nostalgia, but confusion. What felt like the right path now appears distant, every future shaped by decisions already made, and none of them comforting. There’s wonder here, but it’s scattered.

The song begins in Lydian light, slightly too bright to trust, then descends into angular, weightier rhythms. Synthesisers imitate guitars like memories imitate reality, familiar, but fragmented.

It’s like standing at a crossroad that leads nowhere, watching the sky change above you, knowing you’ll still be here when it does.

Twelfth Colour (Ahir)

No past. No future. Just now.
"Avui" lives entirely in the present. It doesn’t reach backwards or forward, it just stays. The past can’t be changed. Tomorrow remains uncertain. But today? Today, there is love. Today, there is sadness. And both still belong to her.

The song unfolds patiently, using only a handful of notes, like a truth too simple to dress up. It moves without structure, drifting through a haze of colour and memory until one voice, one synth, rises to speak alone. Not to resolve anything, but to feel it out loud.

It’s like standing still in a neon-lit club where no one is dancing, just thinking. Light moves across the walls. The song burns brighter. And then it ends, mid-thought, waiting.

Fourteenth Colour (Avui)

There are moments when something shifts, quietly, without announcement, and everything you thought had settled begins to stir again. A presence you’d tried to forget starts to drift back into view. Slowly, uneasily, the heart begins to remember.

The feelings return, too. Not in triumph, but with hesitation. With questions. With the fear of watching a story repeat itself. And yet, beneath all of it, love waited quietly, like it always had.

The song’s core is made of two melodies, never alone, always together. They echo each other, not as call and response, but as one breath split in two. They never stray far. They never evolve apart. Like two souls that don’t know how to leave each other, no matter how far they’ve gone.

Everything else, the verses, the harmonies, the pulse beneath, rises and falls around this one truth.

Imagine two lights moving slowly toward each other in a dark sky. That moment right before they touch, when everything still feels uncertain, but inevitable.

Seventeenth Shade (Seele)

Not a portrait. Not a story. Just the reason.
"Motif" doesn’t try to describe her. It simply accepts that she’s the reason all of this exists. Every song before, every song after, she’s the thread through it all. Not always visible, but always there.

The piece begins with no clear path, just fragments, sparks. Then a single line emerges, steady and deliberate, like a thought being repeated under the breath. From there, everything blooms. Layers build, melodies unfold, each one colliding with the others and still holding together, barely, like a structure that shouldn’t work but somehow does. Counterpoint becomes conversation. Chaos becomes clarity.

Somewhere in it all, something pulses like a message, unreadable unless you already know what it says.

Fifteenth Colour (Motif)

The shape of a future that doesn’t call your name.
"Demà" moves forward, but without desire. It imagines tomorrow not with fear or longing, but with indifference. What once felt urgent now arrives in silence.

The song loops over itself, shifting through strange scales and fractured pulses, sections rise and vanish like distant thoughts, never quite circling back. But near the end, something shifts. Familiar shapes re-emerge, not quite the same, but close enough to recognise. They linger a little longer this time, as if echoing back from somewhere you thought you’d left behind.

It feels like walking through a city after the rain. Everything gleams. No one waits. But still, something calls, not from ahead, but behind.

Thirteenth Colour (Demà)

There’s no fanfare, no finality, just the quiet motion of someone still walking forward, unsure of the path but committed to moving anyway. "Epilogue" does not bring closure, nor does it offer revelation; it simply acknowledges that time moves, and so must one. The feelings still linger: love, doubt, sorrow, but now, they hum beneath the surface, softer, less urgent, like distant echoes.

A looping bass and simple percussion carry the track, while an electric guitar weaves its way through the space with a free improvisation, two phrases that resemble verses, and two more that gently crest into something like a chorus. It’s a song that lives between statements, half-muttered thoughts on a long walk at dusk.

A winding path through a fading landscape, not quite night, not quite memory. The sky is overcast in soft colours, and everything feels paused, like the moment before a page turns.

Seventeenth Colour (Epilogue)

Some memories never leave, they just whisper softly in the silence.

First Shade (Whispers) [Music Box]

Two guitars converse in warm, unhurried phrases, joined by the soft heartbeat of cajón and shaker. Their sound carries into the stillness of a midnight glade, where moonlight drips between the leaves and shadows sway to the rhythm.

Glade

A steady, percussive piano steps forward like a guide, each note a footfall on empty streets. Space opens around the rhythm, the air shifting toward something unseen.

Whisperroot

Gentle waves of sound rise and dissolve, as if the journey begins in a misted landscape before dusk. Soft piano tones meet airy textures, hinting at paths yet to be found.

Moss-drunk Air

A quiet procession of notes drifts through a haze of reverb, the pace steady and unchanging. It feels like crossing a threshold, leaving behind the last traces of day.

Lonely Tree

A fragile melody spins from the gears of a lone music box, its chimes carrying like distant light through fog. A pause in motion, as if time slows to let a memory surface.

A single guitar speaks in hushed tones, each note stretching into the dark. Stripped of all ornament, it feels like a private performance under the weight of the night.

Nocturne No. 1 in B minor, Opus. 14, Andante: Murmurs

The final movement. "Clematis" is a cathartic release of all the emotions that have built up throughout the first part of "Vernal". A mixture of everything—frustration, love, sadness, and chaos—this track embodies the turbulent mind trying to make sense of it all. "Clematis" brings the sonata to a close with a sense of resolution, yet still leaves the listener with lingering questions, much like the emotions that have remained unspoken.

Vernal

Clematis

A sense of frustration and confusion unfolds in the opening track. The music swells with a feeling of being trapped within one’s own emotions—wanting to speak but not knowing how, or even if it matters. "Anemone" captures the delicate tension of an unspoken love, leaving the listener with a bittersweet understanding of the internal chaos that accompanies unexpressed feelings.

Anemone

The first movement of the sonata—fast-paced and energetic—begins with a sense of admiration and longing. As the piece develops, it evolves into something more abstract and chaotic, mirroring the internal conflict of loving someone from a distance and never having the chance to speak. "Nerine" speaks to the confusion of these feelings and the struggle to reconcile them.

Nerine

"Inchoate" serves as the introduction to the sonata, a blank canvas filled with possibility and potential. Inchoate sets the stage for the rest of the album, giving a subtle hint of the emotional complexities to come. This piece is still forming, a first attempt at understanding the landscape of emotion. It’s open-ended, incomplete, and waiting for something more.

First Part (Inchoate)

The second movement of the sonata. A moment of sadness and quiet reflection. This track moves at a slower pace, creating a meditative atmosphere that reflects the emotional weight of lost opportunities and missed connections. "Dew" embodies the inner struggle of watching from afar, trying to convince oneself that some things are better left unsaid—yet suffering from the silence, yearning to speak, to scream, but bound by the quiet restraint of unspoken words.

The third movement, a waltz, presents the feeling of happiness stolen—pride in another’s achievements, yet unable to fully participate in the joy. "Turgor" represents the tension between holding something back and the yearning to express it. It’s a dance of restraint, a reminder of the unspoken and unseen in the midst of outward celebration.

Eighth Impulse (Turgor)

A fleeting glimmer in the dark, "Spark" captures the moment just before the last memory fades completely. There is no longer a grasp on the emotions that once defined the journey—only an empty stare into the infinite, as Whispers watches the light in the glade, its glow slowly swallowed by the vast void. The song is a brief prelude to the end, where even reflection seems to lose meaning, leaving only the quiet expanse of uncertainty.

Spark

“Silver Threads” weaves through the lingering emptiness, as the last vestiges of feeling slip through like fragile strands of silver. There’s no sharp clarity, just a quiet thread of connection to something once known, now fading into oblivion. The song is a delicate exploration of what’s left behind—like memories that are fraying at the edges, slipping away just as they are almost remembered. A soft, distant echo of what was, now unravelling.

Silver Threads (Instrumental Demo)

A fragile mask, fluttering in the wind—“Paper Kite” is the song where arrogance is not just embraced, but worn with disdain, like a brittle facade that barely holds together. The song is built in rondo form, its recurring refrain a reminder that pride is cyclical, always returning to a centre of cold, calculated indifference. The listener is drawn into a space where vulnerability has been discarded, replaced by a defiant, almost theatrical air of superiority. But beneath the surface, the arrogance is fragile—like a paper kite in the wind, it teeters on the edge of collapse, held together only by the force of denial.

Every repetition of the central theme feels like a performance, a repetitive dance of self-assertion. The brief moments of contrast—when the song shifts from the confident refrain—reveal cracks in the armour, a glimpse of something less certain, less invincible. Yet the arrogance always returns, each time more forceful, more hollow. There’s a knowing tension in the way this false indifference is paraded—an awareness that this pride is both a shield and a cage, carefully constructed, but never fully secure.

"Paper Kite" is the moment when all the layers of grief, longing, and regret are buried beneath a carefully curated exterior. It is the final embrace of pride, knowing that even the most fragile of defences can hold, at least for a while.

Paper Kite

A flicker in the darkness—a momentary pause, suspended between longing and release. "Sky’s Lantern" is a delicate reflection on what has been lost, a gentle descent into the aching sadness that lingers even after the storm. Where the arrogance of "Dandelion" once held sway, here, vulnerability returns, soft yet unrelenting. The song draws the listener into a mystical forest at midnight, where the solitude of the heart mirrors the isolation of the trees, and time itself seems to stand still. At the centre of this glade, where the world feels impossibly still, a sliver of light breaks through the dense canopy, casting a glow that is more than just the reflection of stars or moon—here, the universe itself seems to unfold, revealing both the infinite and the intimate.

In this space, memories float like fragile lights in the distance—distant, beautiful, and forever just out of reach. The lantern, suspended in the night sky, is not a beacon of hope, but a void—a quiet, ever-present reminder of the unknown. It whispers that even in the depths of grief, there are no clear paths, only questions and the silence that lingers after.

“Sky’s Lantern” is the moment when pride gives way to vulnerability, where the heart is still torn between what was and what will never be, yet still drifts forward, unsure, carried by the pull of something that may never be understood.

Sky’s Lantern

In the stillness of the glade, "Veiled Horizon" reflects a quiet loss of direction. The echoes of past emotions begin to fade, leaving behind a hollow, empty space. The song drifts through an atmosphere of uncertainty, where nothing feels solid or clear. The absence of definition becomes the focus—what once felt intense now seems distant, like a horizon veiled in mist, just out of reach and fading. This is a moment suspended in time, where even the memories feel like distant shadows.

Veiled Horizon (Instrumental Demo)

A fleeting moment of clarity, a river of memories shimmering with the illusion of beauty. "Glass River" is the quiet realisation that dwelling too long in nostalgia only reveals how fragile those memories truly are. Here, the aching grief of the past is momentarily forgotten, giving way to an almost lighthearted reverie—a flow of beautiful thoughts, once cherished, now reimagined with a certain detachment. The song dances between two sections, almost as if the mind is lost in a dream, only half-aware of its own fragility.

But beneath the surface, something shifts. The Minore section, with its rich, dark tension, breaks the dreamlike state, pulling the listener back to the pain that lies hidden beneath these ‘pleasant’ memories. The shift is sharp, unexpected—like the shattering of glass. Anger lingers in the air, bitter and sharp, reflecting not only sorrow but a certain disillusionment. Here, the past is no longer viewed with rose-colored glasses but with a seething awareness that the beauty was always intertwined with something darker.

"Glass River" is the moment when the past is both held close and released. It is a place where nostalgia is not just a source of pain but also a vehicle for anger, a river of memories that shatters against the rocks of the present, breaking the illusion of beauty and revealing something far more jagged.

Glass River

The first breath of a storm—"Dandelion" marks the moment when sorrow begins to transform into something sharper. A song built from two voices: one of heartache and yearning, the other of scorn and indifference. Whispers, the voice that once cradled a soul in love, now twists that affection into disdain. The song pulls the listener through waves of regret and longing, each note heavy with the weight of unspoken words, before slowly giving way to a quiet, yet undeniable pride. Acceptance begins to take root, but it’s tainted by arrogance, the bitterness of someone who has both suffered and come to terms with that suffering—but refuses to be broken by it. "Where would you be without me?" Whispers asks, cold and confident, its words heavy with both accusation and a dark sense of power.

As the first movement, "Dandelion" is a collision of vulnerability and defiance, where the soul teeters between love lost and the quiet arrogance of survival. It is a moment suspended in time—neither pure surrender nor complete rebellion, but the fragile space in between, where pain is both a burden and a weapon.

Dandelion

“Shadows In Bloom” is the quiet reckoning at the end of the journey. Detached from the emotions that once defined it, the song looks back on the evolution of Whispers—from a shade born of sadness and longing to a force that has given rise to many others. Here, the shadows no longer feel like mere echoes of what once was; they have taken root, bloomed into something far more complex and endless. What began as a reflection of shattered dreams, the weight of unspoken grief, has become a tapestry of fleeting, fragile things—each shadow a piece of something lost but never forgotten.

The song moves through the imagery of the glade, the forest, the void, and the lantern, all fading into one continuous existence. It’s both a closing and an opening, an understanding that everything—love, loss, pride, longing—has given rise to something new. The shadows exist because Whispers did. And in their quiet bloom, they mark the beginning of countless other stories, born from a single, unfulfilled desire.

Lyrics:

Moonlight traces a broken clock,
Echoes whisper like an endless talk.
Lucid eyes in a shattered dream
Fade away to an endless stream.

Shooting stars meet the void’s embrace,
Stardust tumbles from the twilight’s face
Chasing pulses of broken gleam
That dissolve in a crimson steam.

Flowers mirror the memory pale
Lilac branches form a moonlit veil.
Teardrops spill like molten glass
And stain the world they cannot pass.

We bloom in the dark where shadows play,
Woven in light that's pulled away.
Electric skies spark our gloom,
Dancing alive, we're shadows in bloom.

Embers bearing polluted air,
Midnight wishes vanish into despair.
Velvet clouds veil the dance of stars,
A heart collecting eternal scars

Let the river shine, reflecting the night,
Make the heart of the glade a fading light
Fireflies daydream of a fleeting date,
Incinerating the shy cascade.

We bloom in the dark where shadows play,
Woven in light that's pulled away.
Electric skies ignite our gloom,
Dancing alive, we're shadows in bloom.

We bloom in the dark where shadows play,
Woven in light that's pulled away.
Electric skies ignite our gloom,
Dancing alive, we're shadows in bloom.

We bloom in the dark where shadows play,
Woven in light that's pulled away.
Collapsing dreams ignite our gloom,
Dancing alive, we're shadows in bloom.

Claire's Prelude

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