The return of Equatorial this year brings a refreshing reminder of this artist and composer’s commitment to the sheer enveloping escapism of instrumental, atmospheric sound-design.
Secret Gardens is four tracks on paper, but over 50 minutes in full of sweeping electronic and ambient soundscapes, and it begins with a careful blending of electronica and organic, natural-world elements that increasingly embrace you.
Among the shadows of the dervishes provides a long-lasting stream of musical waves and tones, somewhat dreamlike but also mildly urgent from a rhythmic perspective – and that’s not in a drumline, far from it; the music has a gentle chaos to its patterns, a self-defined turbulent IDM backbone, with a middle-eastern mystique running in unison.
There’s an exotic vocal flavour, alongside these sci-fi soundwaves and notes, and this creates a sense of rising enchantment that only grows stronger throughout the near-fourteen-minute journey. The song features a mutated version of the riff from Ghost Rider, by Suicide, and is a welcomed alternative to the more traditionally structured electronic tracks that seem so simple and rather predictable these days.
As we move into Chirico street, a low-key drumline and sweeping atmospheric and industrial layers are quick to redirect the experience. This modest techno offering is again extensive in length, and ultimately feels like a longer, slowly evolving project in itself; complete with moments of light intensity, darkness, and provocative imaginative audio-cinema. While there’s something oddly calming and hypnotic about the opener, this second piece feels more soaked in urgency and even slightly jittery, with its haunting, often unresolved melodic fragments.
Versatility again strikes well, as the shortest track of Secret Gardens falls into view. Eighties rhythmic hits add drama, synths and tones add a kind of other-worldly gentle downpour, and the echoing melodies, while brief, present a subtle twist of joyful optimism, in my view. Spring river in the flower moon night is a reworking of a traditional Chinese melody (Chun Jiang Hua Yue Ye), and given it’s mainstream track length, is a rather beautiful, calming and colourful original, that’s easily accessible for new listeners to the Equatorial approach.
Finally, we return to the epic journey composition style, as the overland route presents over twenty minutes of immersive evolution and meditative warmth. The idea was to intermittently utilise beats and quieter ambient tones, as a means of representing an ever-changing landscape that we are slowly traversing with our protagonist, and it works incredibly well, as you sit back and submerge yourself in the moment.
Equatorial’s fascination is with the concept of poetic sound, and as such, these patterns and ideas, these intoxicating arrangements, are deeply imaginative, impactful, and – perhaps more importantly – starkly unique in experience, for each and every listener who spends time with them.
