Field Lines Cartographer :: Phases of This and Other Moons (Castles in Space)

Otherworldly yet strangely familiar, sometimes sounding oddly more organic than electronic, at once beauteous and mysterious, huge and delicate.

A musical ethnographer of strange beautiful worlds

Mark Burford sets the controls for the heart of the moon as he embarks on a fresh Field Lines Cartographer foray. Phases of This and Other Moons is distinguished by being premised on a single Buchla 208C Easel Command synth, making a virtue of it, focusing on the sonic essence of the instrument processed through various FX—a methodology and means that make for a more minimalist approach focused squarely on tone color and atmosphere.

Something in the way it moves, the sui generis rawness of its timbres, attracts Buford to Buchla like no other, inducing mooning, not so much head over heels as over the moon—of our solar system, to be precise: otherworldly yet strangely familiar, sometimes sounding oddly more organic than electronic, at once beauteous and mysterious, huge and delicate. Working intensely over a period of weeks, FLC’s most frequent mental projection became the surface of one of Jupiter’s moons, or watching a satellite of Uranus transit across its host planet. A space ode, a sonata of swell and relent, shapes and shades through dim-lit regions ensued, becoming a focal concept, reflected in its overall semiosis (look’n’feel, track titles, artwork).

Ultimately, Buford’s growing status as a musical ethnographer of strange beautiful worlds is further cemented by Phases of This and Other Moons, a 2023 space odyssey likely to lure in adepts of early Tangerine Dream and Steve Roach to later synth-aesthetes, Pye Corner Audio and Polypores.

Phases of This and Other Moons is available on Castles in Space. [Bandcamp]