I’ve written almost 600 pieces here since 2012, and something that I find harder and harder as the years going by is maintaining some sense that what I’m doing feels sufficiently and deliberately different in each post to reflect positively against every record. Part of the difficulty is the humdrum of working life exists in a relatively stable rhythm, and so the range of experiences and emotions over any given period of time tends to be fairly invariant. This is a good thing in some ways but for talking about music, and relating to music in the way I attempt to here, it can get to feel a bit “samey”.

This is obviously unfair on the music at hand, much of which is very nice and reflective in its own unique right. And whilst many people (especially the artists) may only see one post or a handful of posts, I can see and remember my oeuvre and know when something is phoned in or some rehash or regurgitation of a feeling or thought line I’ve expressed before. I suppose one could argue that these recursive loops are all a part of my journey and represent the eternal fixations of my philosophy and personality (themes if you will), but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s hard to put meaningful, substantive words to the x-thousandth record you’ve heard.

It’s often in the moments now where there’s some kind of beat change or surprise encounter that compulsion strikes. Last weekend the forest was rife with Spring birdsong, an aural prelude to the visible changes to the trees and flowers that are only just creeping in. A pair of woodpeckers hammered in the barren canopies, herds of roe deer pranced distantly, snowdrops haunted safe nooks: all these little symbolic intimacies, and then Wild Flowers came along.

Tom’s piano forms the ethereal core here, delicate and distant, phasing into and out of clarity as soft chords emerge as if from air. Andrew’s gentle ambiences waft in the undertow in suggestive intervals, tidally moving the piano’s expressions in even farther remove. Curiously these textures have an impassioned character to them, tempered and tamed such as they are yet seem to betray some greater force as though they’ve been miniaturised.

Dominant opener “Speaking to the Rose” sets the idiosyncratic conversational path as piano strokes tinkle carefully out into the open air as the first hesitant steps of Spring bloom to test the climatic waters. Synths and strings scratch the peripheries of our senses in gusts with a secretive strength that betray the profound depths of the imminent and ongoing change.

And though the likes of “Hornbeam”, and even perhaps closing “Illumine”, create a sad counterpoint in their minor key liltings and rarified drones, they also lead to and evoke a much fuller “Mayfly” inverting the order in a rush of comparatively dizzying ambience that positively bursts into life. Indeed elsewhere, after the melancholia has faded away into an infinitesimally receding point in the closer, a brief moment of lightness plumes up out of the darkness in surprise, in levity, in counterpoint. It is cavitation flash, the pulsing plasma spark that briefly flares following implosion, or the Big Bang reversing after the Big Crunch.

At those moments where it feels as though motivation is lost and excitement in the possibility of the new has faded, these little shocks come out of nowhere sure as the Earth remembers Spring’s arrival. Retreat and collapse reverse instantaneously:

And I post again.