Austin Williamson & Blanket Swimming :: Horizons (Dragon’s Eye)

Emerging from Horizons one feels purified, transformed, and excited to pursue one’s own deep-listening journeys into natural places in our own local habitats that we can sanctify with awe and wonder.

Prairie sounds open Inner landscapes

As arboreal primates now come down to the ground, we humans tend to explore place mostly through sight. Yet listening can connect us to place at a much deeper level, as this beautifully introspective yet outward-directed album by Kansas City-based musicians Austin Williamson and Blanket Swimming (Thea Maloney) demonstrates. They succeed wonderfully in their goal of co-creating this album with the Rockefeller Experimental Tract, a 10-acre prairie remnant in Lawrence, Kansas that researchers use to test prairie management and restoration methods (burning, grazing, mowing, etc.). The swishing sound of grasses dancing, birds calling, and wind whispering become keynote voices from the prairie that resound throughout the album, animating it. As the musicians respond to these field recordings with synth compositions, I appreciate their subtlety and restraint, showing us a deep listening and careful emotional attunement that we can all learn to practice as we explore places both in nature and inside ourselves.

The album opens with a brief composition named with a specific latitude and longitude, announcing immediately the musicians’ deep engagement with a very particular prairie place. One gets a feeling of expansiveness from the music, like dawn unfolding across the horizon, and a shimmering radiance that powerfully evokes the peaceful magic of early morning in nature. Yet we are immediately reminded that this is an embodied journey through place, not just an intellectualized one, as we hear feet moving through the grass and the dawn chorus of birds awakening.

Next the musicians argue for a specific method of engaging with place via a lengthy (20-minute) second track called “Viewing Ourselves as Strangers.” With their music the composers show how much more we can feel and understand about a place if we approach it with respect and humility, viewing ourselves as strangers entering other creatures’ nature home. And as we explore more deeply outward into this prairie place, the listener also finds their attention redirected inward, toward a state of awestruck, even spiritual reflection that mirrors the hush and silence of the prairie. But the musicians never let us stray too far from this particular prairie, as drones augmented with tiny movements like the ruffling of raptor wings in distant flight, or the skittering of a tiny rodent through the grass, insist that we particularize our musings. Listening to this slowly unfolding track feels like carefully watching the constantly shifting patterns of clouds moving across the sky, or soft breezes rippling through the grass, ever changing yet constant in their repeated, patterned simplicity. By listening deeply and empathetically, we can make familiar places strange in a way that can lead us to care and action on their behalf.

Wind, grass, silence reveal everything ::

The third track, “Temporary Utopias,” evokes for me the fleeting, perfect moments of intimate connection with a natural place that becomes a temporary refuge for the visitor from the loudness and frenzy and disconnection of the human world. Sounds of walking, rattling grasses, and gentle birdsong root us here, now. Synth compositions frame the scene beautifully, building a sense of generous space, limning our sense of wonder and suspending us within it, yet also introducing some darker, discordant notes that humans can’t help bringing with us wherever we go.

On the closing track “Horizons,” the listener comes to appreciate both the percussive granularity and the liquid washes of wind or water that characterize the Rockefeller Prairie. Bright, shimmering synths softly unfurl and trace the infinite line of the prairie horizon, inspiring the listener to turn to look in all directions, yet also pulling us back to the center: our own awareness, grounded in place. As broad washes of synth roll past like wind or water, we see pastel colors flare and subtly shift across the sky: warm rosy reds, lemony yellow streaks like scent-trails between the clouds, and the cool granular violet of evening. Meanwhile persistent but gentle percussive sounds remind us of tall grass-stems rattling against one another, or quiet insect voices clicking.

Emerging from Horizons one feels purified, transformed, and excited to pursue one’s own deep-listening journeys into natural places in our own local habitats that we can sanctify with awe and wonder.

Horizons is available on Dragon’s Eye. [Bandcamp]