Seasonal Diary II: Lush Abundance

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.