Tom Eaton: Elements: Audio Environments Parts 1-4
Tom Eaton

Created by Tom Eaton at Imaginary Road Mastering in Newburyport, Massachusetts, these twenty-eight “ambient sonic landscapes” (his term)—each precisely ten minutes in length—colour the environment with a subtle though never entirely subliminal sonic “tint”; placing oneself within an indoors space and immersing oneself in the project makes exposure to it a rather transforming experience. In keeping with the parts' titles, Eaton could have titled the work Nature Environments, Parts 1-4 when the pieces so convincingly evoke the outdoors. The material plays less like in-studio elements that have been assembled to convincingly simulate natural phenomena and more as if the latter underwent conversion into a preserved sound form. Eaton apparently created more than fifty pieces, from which he selected twenty-eight that to him naturally aligned themselves into the four groupings.

While each piece registers as an integrated whole, there is a sense in which the elements organize themselves into foreground and background. Eaton typically establishes a foundation that allows for a free flow between sounds in the forefront. That backdrop ensures that a sense of stability is in place while allowing for pauses between the front-line elements to occur without any lessening of continuity. The opening part, Air, sets the general tone with seventy minutes of material by turns peaceful, soothing, ethereal, brooding, and at times mesmerizing. Much of it unfolds slowly in a manner that evokes the hypnotic effect of time-lapse photography. During “A View to the North,” minimal chords stretch across a vaporous, softly exhaling backdrop. In “A Distant Storm Over Painted Desert,” shimmering, steel guitar-like figures and softly warbling synth phrases resound as elements below rumble threateningly. Whereas one track captures the celestial character of the upper stratosphere and that incredible moment when the view from the plane window reveals you're hovering just above the clouds, another conveys the stillness that emerges in a wintry setting where the only sound is the unearthly whistling of the wind.

Compared to Air, the material in the second part, Earth, sounds, well, a tad earthier, though it's likely the case that projection plays a part in the impressions the listener forms in response to each grouping. Cloud-like masses of guitar timbres imbue “Through the Woods" with a lulling, dreamlike quality that calls to mind material by fellow dreamscapers Windy & Carl and Popol Vuh. Any thought that these are static works is dispelled by “Dust to Dust,” wherein fluorescent flares punctuate a throbbing undertow that until that moment has dominated. As expected, the kind of violence associated with conflagration is absent in Fire, its material instead smoldering like a landscape laid bare. Consistent with that, a title such as “The Glowing Planet” hints that Eaton wishes to emphasize the life-giving and primordial properties of the element, not its capacity for destruction. A warm, comforting aura emanates from the third part's pieces, with “Oxygen, Fuel and Heat” standing out for its gentle percolations.

Truth be told, there's nothing overtly aquatic about the pieces in the final part, Water; instead, they shimmer as resplendently as the material preceding it. That's hardly a knock against it, however, when its settings exhibit the same degree of nuance and polish as those elsewhere. Again track titles such as “The Slowing of Light” and “Stars Above Great Water” prompt listening associations, with the former conjuring the image of light sparkling on a lake's surface and the latter the majesty of the night sky; Water also includes one of the project's prettiest settings, “Below the Surface,” in which dancing keyboard patterns are faintly discernible amidst murmuring synth tones.

November 2020