about the cassette

A cozy collection of botanical background sounds from Lullatone: an arrangement of atmospheric ambience that blossoms into a bouquet of meditative melodies.

What is the obsession with electronic musicians and houseplants? Is it because they’re a captive crowd, there to watch composers create? Because photosynthesis kind of sounds like synthesizer? Because roots and vines resemble cables on a modular synth rig? Or is it just because, ever since Erik Satie coined the term “Furniture Music,” every person with a penchant for soundtracking can’t help but look for things in their immediate surroundings to turn into a muse?

From seedlings to sprouts, these melodies mature more like the life cycle of flowers than typical long-lasting houseplants. Living in Japan, Lullatone quickly learned that half of what makes a flower beautiful is knowing it won’t be around for long. Every spring, phrases about fleeting beauty flood conversations as cherry blossoms saturate the sky. Even the flitting run time of some of the songs evokes the haiku-ish poetry of plucked petals falling away too soon.

Imagined also as a tribute to an avant-garde(ning) local flower shop in Nagoya, Japan, called Tumbleweed—which hosts a special event called “Flower Listening” multiple times a year—this album plays a bit like a mixtape, but with tracks made all by one person. Shawn, the songwriter and producer behind Lullatone, often played at the event and found himself making more and more new songs to especially fit the space. But as time went by, he listened to them in other places and noticed the impressionistic tone of the tracks translated to lots of other areas as well.

Whether you want to call it botanica / petalcore / pollinated pastoral / j-ambient / folktronica / floraltronica / compositional collage / environmental / kankyō ongaku / “ambient for angiosperms” or just plain instrumental, we hope these soft and serene synth sounds accompany you (and maybe some flowery friends) wherever you find yourself growing.