landtitles: as the night comes softly down
Polar Seas

Harry Towell & Guy Gelem: Restful Spaces
Polar Seas

Restful Spaces is certainly one of the prettiest ambient recordings I've heard. A major reason for its tone stems from what collaborators Harry Towell and Guy Gelem hoped to achieve in creating it. Inner sleeve text clarifies that they aimed to create a soothing, album-length lullaby and that the two crafted the material as they awaited the births of their respective daughters; personalizing the project further, the title of each track references a location that holds special memories for them. Though 2000 miles separated the co-creators during the production of the remotely created album, no sense of distance emerges within its six delicate soundscapes.

The two are well-equipped for the challenge. Ambient aficionados know Towell as the Lincolnshire, UK-based artist who's released music under the Spheruleus name and runs Whitelabrecs. Gelem hails from Jerusalem, Israel and, like Towell, has issued music on a number of labels, among them Time Released Sound and Rural Colours. Soundcloud text about the Spheruleus sound could as easily apply to what the two are doing on their Polar Seas set when it's described as “timeworn, rustic, and melancholy.” Gelem's cello is a primary element on the album, though field recordings, guitars, and other sounds are layered and interwoven too.

A peaceful ambiance dominates from the outset, with “Magnolia Hall” a serene template for the thirty-eight-minute release. Cello and guitar fragments softly intone amidst a dense array of nature sounds and washes, the lulling soundscape an eight-minute exercise in entrancement and time suspension. As lovely is “Central Park,” the duo's evocation of the Manhattan landmark distilling the site's pastoral charm into seven dream-like minutes. The elegiac cry of of the cello is even more at the forefront here, and the material in no way suffers as a result. The tone of those opening pair carries over into the remaining four, each one a delicately woven tapestry custom-designed for immersion. Anyone questioning whether ambient music can reach the uppermost heights of beauty need only look to “The Springs” for incontrovertible proof.

Sound designer, photographer, and Vancouver Island resident Grant Gard made a strong impression when his landtitles release Your Voice In Pieces came out on Slowcraft Records in April 2021; he now complements it with an equally memorable collection for Polar Seas, as the night comes softly down. Recorded in Victoria, British Columbia during 2020 and 2021, the thirty-three-minute album was created using a variety of sound sources, from synthesizers and field recordings to room tones and tape manipulations.

In exploring so fastidiously micro-detail, texture, and atmosphere, Gard's seven pieces are representative of ambient soundscaping of the kind labels such as Home Normal, Sound In Silence, Hibernate, and, yes, Polar Seas traffic in, and though he hasn't titled the tracks after specific locations as do Towell and Gelem on their release, a distinct impression of place is conjured by the material. Particularly evocative is “nightbirds and static flight” for the thick stream of voices, nature sounds, whirring noises, static, and glimmering fragments that flows through it. Like a time-worn Polaroid photo, a hazy quality permeates the material, such that “sunglint” and “borrowed light” flicker like light refracting through tree branches. Be it the distant sound of river water or the symphonic collage generated by a forest, nature never seems far away in these calming constructions.

June 2022