A collection of tunes that does away with obsessiveness, the anxiety of perfectionism, in favour of freshness and immediacy — capturing the world as it was met while recording alone at home over a period of years. "Don't overthink it," VanGaalen told himself again and again, despite the push/pull love/hate of his relationship with songwriting. "I'm always trying to get outside of the song—but then I realize I love the song."
This is a record that gleams with VanGaalen's musical signatures: found sound, reverb, polychromatic folk music that is by turns cartoonish and hyperphysical—like ultra-magnified footage of a virus or a leaf. Apparently, the LP began life as a "pretty minimal" flute record. (There's only a vestige now, on "Flute Peace"—one of three instrumentals.) Later it became an electronic record "for a while" and finally, "right at the last second," it "turned into a pile of garbage." The good kind of garbage: glinting, useful, free. Music as compost — leaves and branches ready to be re-ingested by the earth, turned into a flower.
Tracklisting
- Spider Milk
- Flute Peace
- Starlight
- Where Is It All Going?
- Earth From a Distance
- Nightwaves
- Plant Music
- Nothing Is Strange
- Inner Fire
- Golden Pear
- Nightmare Scenario
- Samurai Sword
- Water Brother
