He knew now that this was the only way with life. He knew now that fear and pleasure go together like the nut and the shell. - Vicki Baum, Grand Hotel (1929) Five years after his debut Music For Video Stores (2020), Squama co-founder Martin Brugger is back on the label with his new album The Shell. It's an introspective record on which field recordings, noisy synths and lo-fi folk guitars yield contemplative emotions with a veiled dream-pop sensibility, the sparse instrumentation and an eerie atmosphere mirroring the quarrels of the inner self. Otherwise created in solitude in his Munich studio, the record features two contributions from label mate Lilian Mikorey (aka PILLBERT).