Sydney label Theory Therapy presents Out of Season, a collection of immersive ambient and downtempo recordings inspired by place, environment and the passing seasons. Created across multiple time zones and four continents, the compilation consists of several geographically distant but sonically connected underground artists.
The collection begins in New Zealand. 'downpour', by Aotearoa based producer èvia, is a landscape drawing in sound, an evocation of the elements that blends subtle environmental recordings with cascading electronics and gossamer-like textures. From there, the compilation ventures into more nebulous terrain. The expansive ‘Shaft of Light’ is unlike anything Cousin and Hugh B have done before, ‘Tar Bae’ and ‘Journey To Urras’ hover somewhere in the interstice between ambient and club music, and ‘Dementia Flower’ recalls IDM icons Boards of Canada if the Scottish duo were to have placed their uncanny samples front and centre. Even the warm, phosphorescent glow of Salamanda’s ‘Hungry Bone’ possesses an unfamiliar quality—like some decomposing pop song, its simple melody is obscured beneath layers of static and hiss. The inverse occurs on Slowfoam’s track, where seemingly disconnected patterns slowly coalesce like watching a cloud form overhead.
The compilation’s second half is a more ethereal affair: a set of meditative ambient soundscapes shrouded in mystery. Reverberant drones, disembodied vocals and haunting incantations from Alexandra Spence, Babyxxan, Match Fixer and Lisa Lerkenfeldt are meticulous exercises in stillness that seem to exist outside of time. Portland artist Patricia Wolf briefly pulls the album back into orbit; the celestial ‘Morning Light’ opens with a flurry of bird calls taken from the musician’s recent trip to Mount Saint Helens in Washington. ‘In The Distance (Blood Moon Mix)’ by Sydney’s Marco Vella, closes the compilation, the setting somewhere just past sundown, not far from where it began across the Tasman Sea. It's by far the most Balearic-influenced contribution, a track imbued with a sense of forward movement, hinted at by its title and reflected in the song’s subtle interplay of melody and percussion, which glide effortlessly along.
The 13 tracks that make up Out of Season were made in Sydney, Melbourne, Seoul, Austin, Chicago, Portland, Berlin and New Zealand. We acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the traditional custodians of the Country upon which Theory Therapy and Low End Theorists was founded, and recognise that sovereignty has not been ceded. We pay our respects to Elders, past, present and future.
Out of Season is out on Theory Therapy Recordings August 6th. 100% of the proceeds will go to charity. You can pre-order the compilation on Bandcamp.