By the end I feel a shimmering effervescence, like the details of the sunlit landscape slowly dissolving into purple twilight, only to reemerge in new forms dimly sketched in the shapes of the twinkling constellations.
A sense of peaceful resolution
As the world feels ever more chaotic and fast-moving, it becomes crucial for many of us to find ways to slow things down; to reflect and recharge. For British musician, mastering engineer, and visual artist Alex Gold one solution has been to start creating a monthly series of meditation-based “landscape” EPs via his ambient project, fields we found (Alex also runs the ambient label quiet details). I felt especially drawn to this third EP in the series, perhaps because it reminded me of some of the poetry I write as part of my own regular contemplative practice walking along the river trails here.
As this single 27-minute track opens, it slowly grows louder and more intense, like dawn painting the horizon with a riot of color. Sustained bell-like drones give a sense of time passing, but slowly. Over the course of the piece these bell tones combine with throbbing low hums to evoke memories churning deep within our unquiet monkey minds, but viewed at a distance and a bit askew, so that they look and feel different than the originating event. By the end I feel a shimmering effervescence, like the details of the sunlit landscape slowly dissolving into purple twilight, only to reemerge in new forms dimly sketched in the shapes of the twinkling constellations. I also experience a centrifugal momentum; a movement towards a humming vital center of life that can only be imagined obliquely, never fully grasped.
Whereas with mindfulness meditation the goal is to still the mind, to do and think nothing, in Alex’s thickly-layered, drone-filled music I feel more of an intentional impulse toward immersion: learning to look and listen deeply enough to the places outside our windows that we understand where we are, now; to be truly present to the world around us. And when we succeed in this, Mystery echoes in every moment; one’s gaze turns translucent, seeing past the surface of things to the emotional resonances they evoke.
But this is not just quiet music; many sounds jostle for our attention at once, almost to the point of distraction, till a few begin to float to the surface and resolve themselves in the mind’s eye. Listening to landscape 03 feels like zoning out on a train, watching a constant cacophony of images rolling by outside the window till they become a single raucous blur, then suddenly having our gaze hooked by a particular tree or mountain or building or ray of light and having that become our guide back to the present.
Enigmatic and mystery-filled, landscape 03 does not give away all its secrets in one listening or a dozen, just as one can walk the same landscape several times a week and experience different aspects of it each time. Alex’s “landscape” series overall reminds me of a retired friend who has a practice of photographing the moment of sunset as seen off their back deck over the water every day and posting it to their social media. Each sunset has its own unique beauty, despite being viewed from the same place each time, encouraging us to look closer, to appreciate what arises along the horizon of our lives more fully. Like looking at these sunset photos, listening to Alex’s “landscape” ambient meditations offers a sense of peaceful resolution that comes from learning to let go.
landscape 03 is available on quiet details. [Bandcamp]
