Tim David Brice’s partner Julia Dewhirst has curated Wishes for Tim with meticulous extravagance.
The Tim for whom these wishes have been made is Tim David Brice, champion of well-known, unknown and soon-to-be known ambient and electronica up until the moment of his untimely passing. His labels Somehow Recordings, Twisted Tree Line and Vent Sounds released hundreds of them with enthusiasm and panache (and generosity—his labels were non-profit). Brice’s partner Julia Dewhirst has curated Wishes for Tim with meticulous extravagance—the double CD digipak is accompanied by a folder full of postcards made by contributors, art reproductions, a handmade greeting card, a yellow feather, and Tim singing a coastal-feeling pop tune with his band Orisha Fun Fun back in the early nineties on a three-inch CDR.
It would be petty to pick apart individual contributions to a project created out of love and respect, grieving and celebration. Some of the tracks may err on the side of New Age or “beautiful music” but let’s not dwell on it. There’s so much here worth listening to.
The first disc, for instance, opens genteelly with “Mer” by Nicolas Mehlmann, and continues gracefully with “When I Turn Away It Burns Brighter” by Paul Randall, which has a cozy, retro (Tomita, Vangelis) sound and feels like Christmas in the summer by the sea. Jazzdefektor’s “Fairwell” almost seems attached to Randall’s track, both emotionally and aesthetically. Adzuki’s “1012,” which appeared on his own Vent album a little while back is Zen ambient of the highest water, well worth a repeat performance. Ash Fallen Brightly musters a host of angels singing blithely. Josco & Ed Cooke’s “Cross-Border Dreams and Longing” is a field recording of a very active city centre—shoppers and demonstrators jostling for airspace—with a lone songsmith sitting in its midst, cross-legged, improvising a riff. Anne Chris Bakker’s untitled track slides in nicely, alone at the piano, quietly introspective, as if she were indoors, a few blocks away from the hustle and bustle with the window wide open. “From Incandescence to Silence” by Jeff Stonehouse, with its piano shimmering under an aurora borealis arc, dovetails brilliantly into Bakker’s piece and is a personal favorite. “In Darkness” by StringStrang, sucks in the light, not like a black hole but like the lungs of the universe filling with space oxygen. Mehlmann returns with another fleeting interlude of slightly dazed piano and violin and Mathieu Montagne’s “Tous Devant la Barque” cleaves still waters as propeller seeds drop from the trees.
“Artificies III” by Christophe Bailleau, a small meltdown against an otherwise sunny, country landscape, opens the second disc. “A Passage” by Masaya Ozaki moves slowly through its beautiful detritus. The digitally-generated Tibetan monk moan of Andrea Ricci’s “Rueful Moon” exhales itself into a nirvanic drone. Linear Bells’ “David” drone, unwinding a seemingly infinite guitar, contains multitudes. As a rejoinder, Seth-Andrew Kline dips his guitar in the twelve-minute tranquility bath of “Solar Winds.” Lovely, gorgeous. “A Burning Star His Face” by Mark Meddings keens, ambient mourning, the compulsion to fill a painful void. “After” by Carter & Slow Clinic is a beautiful sunrise moment. Its lovely, hushed guitar-piano dialogue and ambient atmosphere make “Holy Ground” by Halftribe pure balm. The finale by A Bleeding Star, “Nightflight,” is a phoenix tearing its wings on the clouds, dispersing them as it is reborn.
Wishes for Tim is available on Vent.
