- Delicate downtempo compositions inspired by gardening and horticulture.
- "A gardener creates the conditions for the plants to come to life and develop on their own. In a similar way, I created a set of conditions and probabilities for the music to make itself. Who is making the music here?" asks Tristan Arp in the notes for his second album. Sculpturegardening. The question might strike some as nonsensical (or prescient, if you inhabit Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst's corner of Web3), but it captures the sense of nature that courses through his second LP. The songs on Sculpturegardening are curious and inquisitive, sprouting off in unexpected and exciting ways, as Arp lightly tends to his compositions and lets them grow how they will.
Arp has previously described a passion for "biomimicry," the practice of making synthesizers sound like the natural environment. You can hear it in the cello on "Pond in Moonlight"—the pitter-patter of bleeps form a lush forest as the cello's rich baritone glides across the grid. Later on in "Cloud Surface," the rushing swirls of synth notes flutter like butterfly wings scattering onto some poetically distant horizon. "A Clearing (In Empty Space)" also has this sense of exploration, as the wooden drums subside into a quiet hush of feedback and drawn-out strings.
Sculpturegardening is Tristan Arp's most gentle release to date. His previous records had a UK sensibility to them, with pockets of sub-bass and broken rhythms. You won't find much of that here. "Foraging Music" does have a bit of a groove under the quivering vibrato and, held under the right light, "Gypsum" could be a dancehall track. There's a bit of dubbed reverb to the drums on "Marble Net." But Arp is fully in the realm of lightly experimental soundscapes, where rhythms only emerge momentarily, like the glitchy sway of "From the Seams." Here, Arp splashes harmony across swirling sampled voices, reminding me of Four Tet in his Domino era.
Through his music-making-as-gardening conceit, Arp evokes the work of ecological philosopher Timothy Morton. Morton posits that the nonhuman world and the human world "coevolve" with one another in a sometimes symbiotic, sometimes antagonistic exchange wherein "the boundaries between, and the identities of, beings are affected by this interconnection."
Their argument is that once we acknowledge our inextricable connection to the environment, we can start thinking about ecology differently, finding it in unexpected places. (Morton helpfully locates ambient music as one such place.) This also feels like the grounding premise of Sculpturegardening, which has its own ecological politics that unfurl song by song. Arp ensures that we're unable to tell where the human ends and the nonhuman begins. With close listening and an open mind, it might help you think about—or at least hear—the world around you just a little differently.
Tracklist01. Pond In Moonlight
02. From The Seams
03. Marble Net
04. Foraging Music
05. A Clearing (In Empty Space)
06. Gypsum
07. Photosynthesis
08. Thought Painting
09. Cloud Surface