Review of Wood, Winter, Hollow [12k1075]

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Enhanced field recordings, or I’d better say, musically enhanced field recordings. That’s the way how we could synthetically define the awesome upgrade to this mic-driven sonic science by Taylor Deupree and Australian musician Cameron Webb from the delicate electroacoustic post-rock band Seaworthy, who decided to break another unwritten rule of this kind of collaborative project as well: instead of edit reciprocal samples and sound files exchanged by Internet, they preferred to work together in person, so that Mr.Webb booked a flight and left Australian summer behind his shoulders to reach New York’s extremely cold winter. They started to grab sounds by microphones and hydrophones from Ward Pound Ridge, a 4000-acre wide historical park nearby Taylor’s studio, whose rich fauna and flora didn’t get sedated only by hard winter, but also by Hurricane Sandy who violently hit that area by scattering litter and broken trees. After three days of recordings, they started to build this album by juxtaposing bells, melodica, analog synths and above all Webb’s entrancing arpeggios on a nylon guitar, whereas real-time mutual interaction highlighted the emotional side of the album, whose sound succeded in emphasizing the enchanted illusory stillness of that place and its emotional hints as well as the seemingly distinct contrast between the typical sounds of a frozen landscape and its absorbing poignant emotional warmth, which sounds like rising from the initial bluesy notes of “Wood” till the somehow harrowing contemplation of “Hollow”.

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