Pulling inspiration from dark diner coffee, warm summers and even colder winters, Strong Black Coffee (SBC) writes piano bits to sleep on. In this anniversary rerelease of their debut self-titled album, the tracks are remastered and the scenes where these songs were created are revisited in the project nostalgically named ‘Engrams from the Floral Couch’. Listeners are invited to see through the lens of SBC but invited to look even further to draw their own feelings of recollection, profound displacement, and eventually quiet contentment through an album, photobook, and short film. 

Accompanying the remastered tracks, Engrams from the Floral Couch takes the form of a photobook along with sui generis written pieces authored by poets and creatives of the like, using SBC as their backdrop. Each author was encouraged to textualize their visceral interpretation of the music, resulting in an honest variety of works that give the reader a window into multiple different perspectives. This exploration is concluded in a short film where each piece and its written work are framed by a vignette that places the viewer in liminal and curious scenes.

Born in upstate New York and revisited years later, Engrams from the Floral Couch is a multimedia explanation of recalling familiar places, remembering those who quietly supported us, and the shaking hands of courage needed to look to what’s ahead of us.