Release Notes
Label: quiet details
Release: discerned in the fugue of streams
Date: October 23rd, 2024
Mastered By: Alex at quiet details studios
Artwork By: Alex in collaboration with r beny
Sometime in 2016, I came upon the California-based electronic musician, releasing his organic, evolving and highly textural compositions as r beny. I followed and watched many of his YouTube videos, where he showcased his modular skiff and various digital synthesizers (I particularly enjoyed watching the Novation Peak ambient showcase, which inspired me to purchase that synth). Throughout the years, I’ve been enchanted (as I’m sure some of you also have) with his particular aesthetic in creating warm, lush, and melancholic pads that stretch out their fingers and brush the worry away. When, in 2018, he got noticed by Dauw imprint, I premiered a track from his Saudade album. Since then, Austin Cairns‘ creations have continued to sell out – you can still buy digital copies of eistla (2018), echo’s verse (2019), and natural fiction (2020) via his Bandcamp. By now, he has established a solid following, so it isn’t easy to be useful with my words on here. So, once again, on this new offering, he “displays his finely honed ability to touch our spirits with his musical sincerity – his willingness to lay his soul bare comes through so powerfully on this album – that’s the very reason there’s something about his music that so many people can relate to: honest; full of integrity; and distilled to its purest essence.”
I can also say the same about the UK-based quiet details imprint, which has amassed a gathering of my all-time favourite ambient artists and relentlessly releases an amazing album every single month. This is almost a community now of all like-minded musicians sharing the label’s aesthetic in creating pieces as an interpretation of the platform’s name. I cannot keep up and cover every single album on there, so you might as well follow along on your own, and I promise that you won’t be disappointed [for example, I failed to give my buddy James Murray a proper write-up of his latest, Weeds, thinking that, yeah, okay, you must already know that it’s fantastic]. Today, I’m dipping my toe back into the myriad of sonic seas and atmospheres with a track premiere from Cairns’ upcoming album, titled discerned in the fugue of streams, because I think that it is, indeed, very special. I could say so much more, but as usual, music speaks louder than words. Oh, but I’ll let Austin share a few things about this piece:
[Editor’s Note: The following words are by Austin Cairns]
In early 2024, I read Robin Wall Kimmerer‘s wonderful book Gathering Moss, which planted the seeds of inspiration for “fir-sweet and mossed” and the album in general. In the book, Kimmerer posits that viewing the world around us with attentiveness is more akin to listening than looking—that this type of mindfulness can enrich our “knowing of the world.”
Learning to see mosses is more like listening than looking. A cursory glance will not do it. Starting to hear a faraway voice or catch a nuance in the quiet subtext of a conversation requires attentiveness, a filtering of all the noise, to catch the music. Mosses are not elevator music; they are the intertwined threads of a Beethoven quartet. You can look at mosses the way you can listen deeply to water running over rocks.
Knowing the fractal geometry of an individual snowflake makes the winter landscape even more of a marvel. Knowing the mosses enriches our knowing of the world.— Robin Wall Kimmerer
Discerned in the fugue of streams is a contemplation on slowing down and paying mind to the quiet details within the threads of noise and patterns – and finding meaning and hope in those threads of noise and patterns. I strongly resonated with the concept of seeing and using one’s other senses in the same way one attentively listens.
The piece, “fir-sweet and mossed” is my musical interpretation, partially informed by my own countless trips to the nearby Santa Cruz Mountains – the way the air fills with the scent of Douglas fir, the way the moss beckons the eye as it glows in green and gold on the fir bark, the way the sounds of the nearby streams and rivers filter through their trunks and leaves.
Mastered by Alex (aka Fields We Found) at quiet details studios, the album will be released on a Compact Disc (featuring a special long-form continuous mix) on October 23rd, 2024. It will also be available as a digital copy directly on the label’s Bandcamp.
