Adam Gottlieb / Victoria Stolz / Aviva Endean / Jim Denley - In Weather Volume 1: The Hidden Valley [Splitrec 031]

Put out on the circuit as cat.no. 031 of the Australian Splitrec. imprint on December 12th, 2k22 is "In Weather Volume 1: The Hidden Valley", a new a quadruple artist collaboration project harking back to Jim Denley's ongoing, roughly four decades spanning practice of recording and playing music, especially referred to as: musicking, within The Hidden Valley in Australia's Budawang Mountains. With slightly esoteric terms like 'Gaia songs' or 'geo music' popping up as somewhat descriptive vocabulary in the accompanying press sheet the album presents a selection of four, partly well extended pieces covering a total playtime of roughly 43 minutes, all of which are captured with the help of portable recording equipment in their raw, unprocessed and most probably improvised form, performed on flute and clarinet as well as a gazillion of objects like found stones against an ever present backdrop of nature, with birds and bugs and flowing water moving through the field of sonic perception all falling together in a certain kind of fully acoustic, Field Recording-infused EcoAmbient probably not too far off of what our early ancestors experienced when first discovering musical practices in the days before the days of yore. Quite an interesting concept, this.