Water — one of our most vital natural resources — flows through this entirely electronic album, where Loula Yorke blends modular synthesis with occasional ocean field recordings and elusive, inexplicable sonic artifacts. A UK-based modular artist known for emotionally charged, cyclical patterns, Yorke crafts a hydrology-inspired sound world shaped by water, electricity, and a distinctive array of synthesizer modules.
Water, voltage, and Yorke’s vision
Water is one of our most precious natural resources, the sound here is all electronic with one track that features some field recordings of the ocean. There are probably no traditional (non-electronic) instrumental sounds but there are some odd unknown and unexplainable things. Loula Yorke is a UK-based modular synthesist and educator. She has a unique style of playing her modular synthesizer instruments, pairing emotional, introspective moments with technical flair and a deep love of evolving cyclical patterns. She has played live in churches, warehouses, and arts centers from Cafe Oto to Tabakalera. Hydrology is the study of groundwater in the soil and rocks of the Earth and other planets, and this album is made from water and electricity, using the Verbos Harmonic Oscillator, Instruo CSL, Nano Ona, Erica Synths Black Sequencer, Basillimus Iteras Alter, ALM Squid Sample, Music Thing Radio Music, System 0 Jove, Doepfer SEM, Make Noise Mimeophon, and Strymon Bluesky.
The six separate tracks form a cohesive whole that lives and breathes, I hear electronic sounds within an atmosphere where mysterious things happen, growing from beautiful ambient sections through to pulsing oscillations that shimmer and shine. I hear an alien place with strange sounds, where rhythm patterns emerge as we roll through all kinds of forms. A constant listener might return, just being amazed, with the notion of water flowing out forever, on and on. Never staying still at any moment, the music takes on the elusive quality of that most precious of liquids to create an album immersed in Yorke‘s unique sound world, an impossible crossing place of surges, currents and gyres. Something oscillates, jostles and flares in and out of existence, myriad synchronous lifecycles in states of ebb and flow. You might catch a glimpse of a crease or a ripple, a jink or a glimmer here or there.
Perhaps inventing interpretations for what SICL might mean is part of the fun (Standard Instrument Control Library, Sitting In Chair Laughing, etc.), and opening with the longest track, there is lots of territory to include. The mathematical precision and fluidity of traditional electronic space music brings a horizon of infinite interacting elements. “SICL” (11:50) is highly original electronic space music, to my ears forming an interpretation of the continuous merry-go-round process of water evaporating from the planet’s surface, moving into the atmosphere, and returning to the land as precipitation. There are many pathways the water may take in its continuous circular motion of falling as rainfall or snowfall and returning to the atmosphere.
Cycles of sound and water ::
There are mischievous curious creatures exploring the universe, here I hear a compelling kinetic tempo loaded with bouncy charm, a faint or brief light reflected from something, with plenty of room for whistling shrimp and other night bound creatures in deeply held low key subterranean oceans, building and layering, expanding and exchanging flourishes with a ticking beat, “Gleam” (6:02). Are they talking to me? It sounds like sometimes the creatures get really close, with gleams of brightness and splendor, as if daylight was flickering through the cracks in the subterranean structures. Now we come to a spring of water issuing from the earth, an ornamental structure which produces a stream of water that rises into the air, “Fontana” (4:53) gushes right in, with sequencers climbing ladders under the overpass, bubbling with benefits, clicking and answering, clicking and making new patterns, flowing and flowing, stronger, a little more each cycle.
Walberswick is on the Suffolk Heritage Coast in England and part of the Suffolk Coast National Nature Reserve, known for its unspoiled dunes, beach, and marshes, surrounded by a mix of coastal dunes, sandy and shingle beaches, marshland, and heathland. “Walberswick Breaks” (5:28) includes the actual sound of ocean waves breaking on the rocks at the water’s edge. With an added fairly energetic steady perky beat, I might start busting some moves, in a nostalgic English seaside dream. Next, sequencer robots dance and expand their numbers, there are currents of these little activist elements creating whirls and tunnels, “Flumen” (5:24). The sound is like any of the river-like features on Saturn’s moon Titan. My homesick eyes are streaming with warm tears. Flumen are also bands of low clouds associated with severe supercell convective storm Cumulonimbus forms, though it can also denote the actual flow or current of water, or even other moving liquids or air, here flowing into halls and large chambers lined with big mirrors and points where things emerge and then melt back into the soup.
The closing track, “Pressure Wave” (8:11), begins with a glow that expands into a buzz, no stress, easy vibrations exploring the electroscape, the way ocean waves involve water displacement, while sound waves involve variations in a medium’s density and pressure. As we rise the knitting changes and never stops, like a sound wave that travels through air or water as compressions and rarefactions, creating areas of high and low pressure that propagate through the medium. I am climbing the steeple staircase for miles, now everything is flowing within the cloud, all moving together in a longitudinal wave in the seafloor or solid Earth, while shimmering electronic sounds flow within and about.
Loula Yorke has released several albums on her own label Truxalis as well as with ambient electronic specialists such as quiet details and Castles in Space. Debuting with YSMYSMYSM on Detroit label Junted in 2019, her career really took off after her synth-building workshop Atari Punk Girls was recognized with a coveted Oram Award (PRS/BBC Radiophonic Workshop). Yorke‘s hypnotically looping album Volta, released in 2024, was chosen as The Quietus‘ Album of the Week and Electronic Sound‘s #2 Album of the Year, as well as earning acclaim from trusted tastemakers such as The Wire, Tom Ravenscroft and Mary-Anne Hobbs. In September 2025 she supported smallpipe virtuoso Brìdghe Chaimbeul on her London and Bristol tour dates with Shahzad Ismaily, catching the ear of a whole new audience of adventurous music lovers. For this, her debut DiN solo release, she explores the world of water in all its myriad forms.
Hydrology is available on DiN. [Bandcamp]
