Love Letters | Cartesian Binary Rec

Rena Jones - Love Letters

Love Letters is a sonic memoir by Rena Jones, shaped by the raw, transformative experience of receiving a recent ADHD diagnosis. In past works, she has explored esoteric concepts—Driftwood traced the life-cycle of a tree, Indra’s Web examined the interconnectedness of reality, and Caesura lingered in the liminal spaces between. Love Letters turns inward, tracing the quiet terrain of memory, misalignment, resilience, and the radical act of offering compassion to one’s former self.

Written, performed, produced, and mixed entirely by Jones—aside from the upright bass on “You Have Always Been Enough,” performed by the immensely gifted Yonaton Elkayam—the album stands as a living portrait of her multidimensional artistry. Programmed beats and live drums pulse beneath the surface, while 6-string fretless bass moves alongside warm analog and synth bass. Cello, violin, and viola carve emotional contours through the mix, and analog and modular synths shimmer with introspective glow. Every texture becomes a page in the letter—tender, unfiltered, vulnerable, yet grounded and true.

At its heart, Love Letters is exactly what its name suggests: a message of recognition and forgiveness to the artist’s younger self, and an offering to anyone who has walked through the confusion of living undiagnosed—the dissonance of feeling slightly out of sync with the world—and the profound relief that comes with finally understanding why. It is a shared breath of understanding, a hand extended across time and experience.

Across its arc—opening with the uplifting ballad “Within With Out” and descending into the shadowed depths of “Dark Knight of the Soul”—the album navigates loss, trauma, revelation, and integration. It dissolves the distance between past and present selves, even featuring a rare, unreleased solo performance of Jones on looping cello, crafted by her future self as a musical letter to the person she once was. Intricate rhythms weave through lush harmonic layers, creating a soundscape that is both cathartic and expansive.

Love Letters is not just a record—it is a gentle reconciliation, a moment of clarity, and a celebration of finally being able to see oneself with honesty and love.