Len Leise - Music For Forests

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  • Given the usual secrecy behind International Feel releases, you'd be excused for taking the story behind Len Leise's 12-inch with a pinch of salt. According to label head Mark Barrott, he bought a cassette called Songs For Sunsets by Leise, a former library musician, in a Paris shop. It featured alluring tropical synths and simple drum machines. Wanting to reissue the material, he contacted friends in Sydney, where Leise was supposedly based, to do a little digging and was able to locate him. Informed that the masters no longer existed, Barrott eventually talked Leise into recording new music for International Feel. Regardless of the backstory, one listen to Music For Forests reveals how astutely Barrott judged Leise's fit with the International Feel roster. Sandy-toed saxophones drift around a sunny percussive stroll on the sparse "Phantom Voyagers," with birds cheeping at its edges. "Seed Of The Blushwoo" features percolating hand drums and early morning chimes, while "Dance Of The Ghost" folds forlorn tribal chanting into some lost-in-the-forest psychedelia. "A Bend In The River" is more spacious and hushed, before hand drums patter out the quiet and almost eerie central motif. "Sea Of Trees," a blend of wispy synths, rippling wave sounds and lazy flutes, flirts with soft jazz touches. At just over half-an-hour long, Music For Forests sounds like a bridge between the soft-focus Balearic of Barrott's own Sketches From An Island and the open-vista ambience of Steve Roach's Dreamtime Return. Released at the end of 2014, it was a fitting close to a resurgent year for the Ibiza label.
  • Tracklist
      A1 Seed Of The Blushwood A2 Phantom Voyagers B1 Dance Of The Ghosts B2 A Bend In The River B3 Sea Of Trees
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