This album is about the micro world of a garden in a small coastal town. For two weeks either side of the 2021 summer solstice I routinely made field recordings of my garden from pre-dawn until the first stirrings of people beginning their days.
Ending up with hours of recordings, I then spent a long period listening and immersing myself in the environment – the ebb and flow, the subtle changes in atmosphere, the conversations between birds and insects, the wind, clouds, trees and the nearby sea and the perception of light.
This is a time most of us are not conscious of. As such, despite morning being the subject matter, from a human point of view it is an album as much about sleep as awakening. The music therefore is as based on both an imagined world and a literal one.
I recorded numerous modular synth pieces in response to the field recordings and then began to incorporate these back into the mix.
Conceptually I was inspired by Wendy Carlos’ Sonic Seasonings LP (1972), although the music in her case was made with a more dramatic quality. Whilst Carlos used very clear sign posts like the sound of rain, thunder, waves and wind in her work – playing out the narrative in almost cinematic way – was more intrigued by tiny details, sometimes stepping outside of real time to give several minutes focus on something that only lasted a second to two. I was also keen not to try and replicate sounds occurring naturally. I realised the folly of an elaborate synth patch being used to mimc the already generative and mesmeric sounds of simple bird calls or insect wings.
Musically I have had the eponymous Michael O’Shea album (1982) at the the forefront of my mind for sometime and owe it a debt of gratitude for some of the conclusions I have drawn, similarly I have been inspired by John James – from who’s 1970 LP I have borrowed my title.
Kieran Mahon, April ’22