by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Gilly’s Wood is the name for a plot of hawthorn woodland in East Kent – and now it shares its name with an album made by Phil Self in the same spot. This is in complete contrast to Self’s previous record under the Dau moniker, for Zed Zed was made in isolation indoors, with just four walls for company.

No, Self has used his connections with instrumental sextet yndi halda to bring to life a set of improvisations he recorded in the woods two weeks after the Smugglers Festival on the same spot in 2021. The recordings feature Self playing the reed organ alone in the woods, with nothing but a Tascam field recorder for company.

What’s the music like?

There is a rich, pastoral beauty to the music here, and a sense of the slow moving passages of time the trees have taken in Gilly’s Wood itself. The sonorous reed organ lends a stately air to proceedings, especially with the slow moving chord progression of Neu. Not only does the organ feature but the birds and other natural phenomena are round about, giving space and perspective especially on headphones.

Self constructs his portrait in six parts, four of them tracks over eight minutes in length, which gives the music plenty of time to plot its slow course and development. There is a fuzzy, out of focus production which gives the music a soft, grainy texture that proves appealing through Camping and the title track, whose slow progression is a beautifully ambient one.

Only The First Of The Month sounds a little more ominous, with two sonorous tones from the reed organ close together – but this is soon past and we return to fuzzy ambience with Mulberry, which uses musical layers to make a vivid collage of consonant sound. Finally Mary is the most expansive of Self’s musical ideas, its broad canvas reaching to the tops of the trees.

Does it all work?

Effortlessly so. Self’s music does not ask a great deal of the listener other than a suitable environment in which to listen. If you find a restful spot in which to enjoy Gilly’s Wood, the benefits are clear.

Is it recommended?

It is. This is a lovely and rather beautiful suite of English pastoral ambience, a celebration of the outdoors and a positive shot of musical mindfulness.

For fans of… Bibio, Loscil, Kit Downes, Erland Cooper

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Published post no.2,069 – Saturday 27 January 2024