A Closer Listen
For those enjoying or enduring summer heat, lazing near a body of water might be a perfect relief. If you can’t get to the water, music can transport it to you. On their new records, two maestros capture the atmosphere of the coastline and the riverside. As we enjoy the blissful sounds, they weave in the stories and histories of specific places. The locations are not passive backdrops for leisure time, but active participants in substantial narratives. Nuclear power and international collaboration inform our sojourn. Just as the landscape is cut across by water, our restful reflection borders on a world of industry and engineering. Both artists use field recordings as part of their toolkit, but not their main method of exposition. Synths and analogue instrumentation are used to express and complement the airy and aquatic settings.
Wil Bolton continues a streak of productivity, with four albums (that we are aware of!) in 2025 so far. Rusted in the Salt Air is named from a passage in W. G. Sebald’s fictionalised walking tour of Suffolk, The Rings of Saturn. The album integrates recordings and radio waves from the real East Anglia into an enthralling sonic journey at the shoreline of the listener’s mind. An interesting piece of trivia: Sebald’s journey was also retraced in Grant Gee’s film, Patience (After Sebald), with soundtrack by The Caretaker. It is hard to think of another novel that has prompted this much excellence in the ambient genre.
In Bolton’s iteration of Suffolk, short drones of electronic interference mix with birdsong. Warm, sunny loops of ambience meet with the plink-plonk of percussive droplets. At its most relaxed, the album evokes a warm day of stillness on the coast. The sea and people shift around us; the summer itself stretches out unchanging. Waves are heard lightly collapsing, while synth tones rush into the gap between each crest of water. Gently repeating melodies are gradually supplemented with additional layered phrases and textures. For a patient listener, a shoreline will continue to reveal extra layers of detail.
Bolton’s gradual melodies give each note a chance to shimmer in the sunlight. Wedded to environmental textures, melodies support a reimagining of the landscape into a soft, restful vision. At the mid-point of the album, “Heather and Gorse” gradually increases the pace of exploratory keys, whilst cerebral ambience continues overhead. The melodic details spring into bud, bloom, and decay whilst the sky and clouds remain aloof and undisturbed. Though defined by the meeting of land and sea, a coast is hardly complete without the sky and its inhabitants. “Under an Azure Sky” illuminates a cacophony of gull calls with bright beams of ambience. Gently shifting phrases of percussion evoke the masts of sailboats knocking in the breeze of a harbour.
Published in 1995, Sebald’s text is the same age as the Sizewell B nuclear reactor, housed in the memorable white dome of Bolton’s album cover. Shown an aerial picture of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, Sebald is reminded of “the dome of the new Sizewell reactor, which can be seen on moonlit nights shining like a shrine far across the land and sea” (Chapter 9). For very different reasons, both domes are contested spaces. The construction of Sizewell B was protested in the 1980s and 1990s, as plans for Sizewell C’s new reactors are today. One concern is environmental impact, including on avian biodiversity.
As we flock to the seaside, we holidaymakers may overlook the industrial. Bolton, however, is an attentive listener. “Ghost Signals” hears a phantom visitation, footsteps through shallow water to the backdrop of a distant alarm. The centrepiece of the album, “Reactor Dome Haze”, begins with a repeated whoosh of intensity that segues into a drone. This pattern suggests the noises of machinery and the generation of power. It also brings to mind the bright glimmer of sunlight hitting the dome.
At the close of the album, the thud and crackle of a coastal path leads us back into birdsong. Brightly pulsing ribbons of sky-blue tones somehow carry dark clouds behind them. In moments of reflection and pause, it helps to have a few more serious notes for the mind to chew over. The resurgence of birdsong offers expert counsel, as a coastline beyond human understanding retreats from view.
Given the quantity of work submitted to ACL, there are plenty of albums that amaze us but don’t receive a review. Recent records by Yui Onodera fall into this group. Too Ne (2022) and Mizuniwa (2023) are especially recommended for their richly detailed style of immersive, unbroken ambience. Kiso Three Rivers takes a different approach, more spacious and melodically dynamic. The bedrock is created with nebulous swathes of sound enriched by field recordings. Atop this, New Age seeds grow into organic micro-environments. Traditional instrumentation features, with the bamboo tubes of the sho and the cracked steel of the hamon. The album offers a softly beautiful sketch of the Kiso, Nagara, and Ibi rivers, which together define the Kiso Three Rivers national park.
Though dealing with three rivers, the albums is structured into two suites. The first, “Kodama”, is by turns lyrically expressive and mindfully calm. It opens and closes with short passages of unadorned chiming, with the feel of a meditative practice. The patient reverberation of metal establishes a ritual event. Inside this sacred space, pitch percussion meets with the rustle, crackle, and splash of field recordings taken from riversides and bridges. Pulses and echoes recur like ripples. Flourishes of ambience build in power, then rush past. Reflective phrases of guitar are answered by babbling flurries of percussive notes. Birdsong and melody are wrapped in a light haze of synthesiser tones, a delicate mist rising around a waterway. “Kodoma 4” leads with overlapping currents of translucent ambience. The composition is dappled with light and gently set in motion, like a surface of water seen by a bather from underneath. With a whirr, something flies overhead – peacefully distant, not troubling the water. “Kodoma 5” has riverside shallows splashing over rocks. Bright layers of synth and percussion cluster together, reflecting the gentle hurry of water, the clink of pebbles and droplets.
Though Onodera’s album is a blissful retreat, it isn’t detached from reality or history. It completes a trilogy of albums on Field Records, with previous instalments by SUGAI KEN and Chihei Hatakeyama. Together, their albums are the centrepieces of the “Waterworks” project, exploring the contributions of Dutch engineers to the aquatic infrastructure of Meiji-era Japan. Building on what had been an exclusive trade relationship between the two countries, hydraulic specialists from the Netherlands helped with the late-nineteenth century modernisation of Japan. Their legacy is still there today, with the Waterworks website allowing visitors to tour 54 relevant locations whilst enjoying the music. The Dutch embassy in Tokyo support the project, suggesting an example of positive international relations, in which Onodera has now played a part.
Where the first six tracks formed a suite of environmental vignettes, the last two deliver a narrative exploration in couplet form. Intense crescendos of synth tones leave moving water in their wake. Metallic percussion takes a loose, relaxed structure as if played by the wind. Like a river passing over a cascade, the sonic bursts maintain a steady rhythm, but new water takes the trip each time. The regularity comforts a stationary observer on the riverbank. We finish with the longest track, where watery, kinetic sounds are joined by a series of overlapping tones. The gaps retract to make a continuous body of sound. The rustling drama of recorded activity continues throughout, with patches of increased motion and burbling water. Dripping sounds are matched by chiming percussion, together striking the surface of our watery soundscape. As this thoughtful and restive album closes, our final impression is how light and movement aren’t essential for water – but they are imperative for human enjoyment of water, in all the impressive shimmer and shadow of an unending torrent. (Samuel Rogers)
Thu Jul 31 00:01:00 GMT 2025