There’s a melancholic tug to autumn, a season of transitions where we accept light and darkness’s coexistence. Arriving at the final instalment in the series, Shadowed Embrace brings us full circle, with five artists distilling in sound this sombre, yet gentle time of year. Whether it’s a joy tinted by dread, or cradling the softer edges of sadness, the tracks welcome the strange mystique that fall brings.

Haron’s “Green Tin Trunk” initiates an intimate pas de deux between bright, sparse notes and intervals of space. Together the elements nestle the listener carefully under a duvet of serenity. Drifting between dreams, the listener quietly treads into the changing season as Adriaan de Roover brings us to a sullen landscape in “Kakapo.” Wuthering tones are layered over a dimmed metronomic pulse, a steady rhythm breaking between the foggy, pewter mists.

The blurry haze continues its tender hold in “rest is so important.” Dania builds a candlelit labyrinth, where a gently beguiling sound seduces the listener through a portal into the dimmer shades of autumn’s allure. A guitar loop creates a steady background of earthly density, while echoing clarinet voices murmur, tremble, and soothe with the warmth of a grainy, flickering light. This flickering fades into a steady drone in Mich L.’s “Cupio Dissolvi.” Inspired by and recorded and mixed during the hottest months ever recorded on Earth in human history, the track stretches over 19 minutes, with subtle layers added in progression. As it develops, there’s more weight given to the mix, a feeling of impending doom slowly settling in that, much like human-induced climate change, has a way of gravely creeping up on us over time. 

“More Tuge / The Sea of Sorrow” further elaborates on the fragility of ecosystems at the cost of human destruction, while capturing a paradox of desolate peace. Manja Ristić went to the Port of Gruž on the Adriatic Sea and recorded the underwater sound pollution of anchored boats with a hydrophone. Silver strands of notes are braided in the air with water burbling below, a pure midnight tranquillity, before the grind of mechanical elements slowly enter the fold. We’re confronted with the effects personal leisure—yachts, boats, catamarans, and cruises—has on our environs, a tension capturing the fabric of joy and despair.

This tension—avoidance and acceptance, hints of gloom and gentle ease—is found throughout the five tracks in their timbres and temporality. Rather than succumbing fully to sorrow, we are invited by the artists to embrace our shadows and feel autumn’s subdued, yet heartfelt caress. 

A tingling air of excitement and wonder envelopes us amidst this season of magic. Seasonal Diary III: Curious Enchantment brings together eight artists to capture the sounds of summer, where long days brim with possibility. Every turn from dawn to dusk presents the allure of a new adventure; resplendent awe awaits. 

Starting our day, “hey where did you go?” finds Loris. S. Sarid mixing incoherent words with honeysuckle kisses that ooze the sweet, golden warmth of sunrise. Moving into the early hours of the day with Sam Prekop’s “Nearly,” one can imagine fairies gently shaking the world awake. Sounds are built with delicate lustre, where sparkling synth trickles down like glassy beads of dew on grass. We’re soon taken on a mystical voyage to an island filled with shape-shifting birds and colorful trees. Grykë Pyje tinkers with surrealist soundscapes on “Covert Sounds from Secret Mounds,” and otherworldly realms are brought to vivid life. 

A warm afternoon rain soon emerges, and “Imber” is ushered in with a sweeping array of ricochets and silver-casted echoes. Yves De Mey incorporates recordings of rain hitting metal, while the sun splashes through in high tones. This bouncing movement leads us to “Glas,” where Vic Bang playfully captures a lively palette of sounds and melodies that sing and whizz through the air with joyful energy. 

That energy builds into a particular type of tension. Written during a heatwave, Rutger Zuydervelt’s “Never Return (Kaleiding Outtake)” captures that paradox of tiredness and restlessness one feels in extreme heat. Soothing pads offer moments of pensive observance, while metallic percussive brushes clash and rattle. The fluster of movement washes away with Nicolas Snyder’s entrancing “Moon Bath Ritual.” Made on the night of a full moon, the gentle sway of water and drone-like, mumbled chants conjure the magic of cyclical ritual. This ritual leads us to the denouement of a summer’s day with the midnight lullaby, “The Juncos’ Nest.” Patricia Wolf offers a sweet ode to these dark-eyed birds who live outside her home, capturing a dark-edged, bittersweet solace between sparse, supernatural synth spells. 

Across all eight tracks, discovery, observation, and imagination take sonic form. The compilation is a coalescence of vivid imagery—memories recollected and imagined—that invite the listener to explore with fascination this scintillating time of year.

As we enter into a new season of blossoming and rebirth, we embrace diversity in creating balance and harmony. It’s all echoed in Lush Abundance, the second edition of our Seasonal Diary series which examines the cycles of life and the changes in nature at different times of the year. Through the language of sound, we aim to explore the complex feelings and emotions that are part and parcel of these radical changes. Featuring seven different interpretations by artists from a wide range of backgrounds, the resulting narrative is multifaceted yet distinctly versatile.

The journey begins with a delicately crafted piano piece by claire rousay, ‘i would like a simple life,’ which, undiminished by environmental sounds and the artist’s breath, brings us closer to her intimate and domestic surroundings. Then, deep in the forest, we encounter a flock of birds in ‘Tok’, whose feverish cries are punctuated by Adela Mede and DASA’s straight-from-the-gut vocals, repeating the Slovak phrase zanechaj niečo, meaning to leave something behind, encouraging to free oneself from cares. In ‘Magenta’, the atmosphere becomes as bright and vivid as the color, with Alexandra Spence and Delphine Dora softly stripping down their instruments to a soft string stroke, disrupting their dialogue with abstractly murmuring voices. Angelo Harmsworth’s ‘Brown Leather’ dismantles this puzzle with gently boisterous frequencies, in which each element seems to be constantly rising and exploding above the others, as if fighting for access to oxygen and light. This awakening from hibernation is portrayed closely in ‘blossom like rust’, where Law of Glances spins a tale of letting go of overburdened heaviness and making room for new beginnings. Ending with almost mystical electronic glitches, they find their continuation in the ecstatic dance of tape-looped synth passages in Nikolaienko’s ‘Ambianta VII’, which is a resounding expectation of a longed-for blossoming and rebirth. The growing sense of lightness persists in ‘Spring Glitches and Hay Fevers’, in which Kate Carr combines foley soundscapes with digital stutters, leaving us gently awakened as the season begins to bloom.

Awaiting the new, this thoughtful diary of intimate confessions and joyful anticipation becomes a sonic space of collective understanding and reassurance that we all seem to be seeking.