ReviewsNow Then

Since 2003, Sheffield's Audiobulb Records has pushed what they call 'exploratory music'. It's a deeply personal style of ambient music, where the artist uses sound as a device to narrate real life experience, learning more about themselves in the process.

Audiobulb's latest release is Kochi from London-based musician Wil Bolton. The album draws from his time spent at the port city Kochi in Kerala, India. Making use of instruments, synths and field recordings, each track captures a totally unique feeling about the city. Key to his music is the resonance of sound and place, with Bolton prolonging the images, memories and emotions of a specific setting.

Bolton remembers a place always on the move

'Reeds', the opening track, evokes the city's hustle and bustle. It's stunning: the cry of a passing crow, the mutter and murmur of voices, the steady, gentle movement of tinkling cowbells. Bolton remembers a place always on the move. Uplifting layers of drone buzz with the business of the track, euphorically, becoming more and more intense.

The last two tracks are more introspective and personal. In the background of both is the steady sound of the shore, ebbing and flowing, receding and encroaching. An unchanging, inescapable sound makes us as listeners feel hopelessly still. 'Tides' is framed beginning and end by an unnerving sound of rattling bells, and 'Nets' crushes us halfway through with an overwhelming swathe of emotional guitar chords, heavy with effects, giving the track a numb quality.

Kochi is an intense study into music's ability to narrate place-specific memory and emotion.

Read original > HERE

A Closer Listen

Kochi, the new album from Wil Bolton, seems to have already arrived in distant lands. As the album opens, birds squawk whilst bells ring like the clinking of masts. Bolton’s field recordings of an Indian port city are reframed by organic-sounding drones. Synth, glockenspiel, electric guitar, and other instruments are spun into delicate gossamer. As the overlaid sounds swell, the sun rises and the events of the day begin.

This is a luxuriously relaxing album. Its four tracks – “Reeds”, “Ropes”, “Tides”, and “Nets” – speak of a nautical idyll, whose hardships are glimpsed only in a languidly soft focus. At times, you seem to kick back on the shore, the seaside action washing over you. At other moments, you are wheeling above with the cawing gulls. On the third track, a sense of menace creeps in, as the sea reminds us of its sublime power to undo human endeavour. However, the tide recedes; you are left unscathed.

Returning home after 40 minutes, you may feel rejuvenated and refreshed. However, the material foundation of this album is not a deserted paradise. The distant voices of fisherman speak of the day’s labour. Car horns remind us of urban dwellers hurriedly at their business. There is a risk that their lives have been appropriated and misrepresented. Ultimately, the place and events we experience as listeners are not theirs. Bolton’s music is a dream or distant memory of a place – one which ushers a new world into being. Both of these albums summon a keen sense of time, place, and narrative. But the worlds they evoke exist only for the listener, in the fleeting emotional responses that sound commands.

Music Won't Save You

Come già in occasione del lavoro dello scorso anno “Viridian Loops”, sono nuovamente le peregrinazioni di Wil Bolton nel subcontinente indiano a costituire la traccia ispiratrice sottesa a una sua produzione.

Nel caso di “Kochi” si tratta in particolare di suoni naturalistici catturati sulla costa indiana meridionale, che scorrono come una lenta sequenza in filigrana a quattro brani, tutti di durata di poco superiore ai dieci minuti, all’abituale stratificata coltre di riverberi e impulsi di synth modulari, filtrati nell’occasione attraverso strumenti e oggetti propri delle tradizioni locali. A onde, versi d’uccelli e suoni della quotidianità umana in riva all’oceano corrispondono infatti drone filtrati attraverso pelli e ricavati da shruti e campane, che dialogano idealmente con gli effetti a pedali applicati a prolungate risonanze di corde elettriche.

Le esplorazioni “sul campo” dell’artista inglese alla ricerca delle radici sonore e culturali del drone restituiscono così in “Kochi” ne restituiscono così una declinazione ipnotica, che senza presentare alcun tratto di esotismo rispecchiano invece tutto il calore di paesaggi materialmente respirati e rimasti saldamente impressi in memorie sospese tra suono concreto e di sintesi.

So What

Sentori d’oriente che riverberano tra le pieghe della memoria come densa distesa flebilmente pulsante. Sono echi e riflessi che giungono dal mar Arabico a strutturare il nuovo percorso firmato da Wil Bolton, immersivo tragitto sensoriale che proietta in modo avvolgente nel paesaggio costiero dell’India del sud.

Tra sature correnti sonore modellate amalgamando scie droniche e frequenze sintetiche emergono costantemente frammenti ambientali catturati sul litorale e risonanze acustiche scaturenti da strumenti tradizionali e oggetti trovati. Le risultanze di tale intreccio strutturano quattro dilatati movimenti che si espandono privi di pause e vuoti, generando una deriva ipnotica morbida e totalizzante, che rinuncia ad ogni facile declinazione esotica per restituire nella sua interezza il portato emozionale legato alla scoperta dei luoghi attraversati.

Un ammaliante diario di viaggio che indaga le potenzialità evocative del suono di una terra affascinante.

Vital Weekly

Via releases on such labels as Eilean, Home Normal, Dauw, Dronarivm, Hidden Vibes, Fluid and Time Released Sound, the name Wil Bolton is perhaps somewhat of a household name by now. His releases appeared in these pages before. For this new album, Bolton uses quite a bit of field recordings that he made at Fort Kochi Beach, in Kochi, a port city in South India. There are birds, crows, people and seaside sounds that were captured and which Bolton mixes with drone sounds that he made using a Shruti box, melodica, Moog semi-modular analogue synthesizer, while also using glockenspiel and electric guitar playing through sound effects.

I gather that from this description one could easily see where all of this is going, in terms of music; ambient music. Both sides contain two lengthy pieces and they are all variations on the same thing, which is a few lengthy, sustaining drones, coupled with individual sounds, from saying the guitar in 'Nets' or xylophone, bells and a variety of field recordings mixed together. I must admit my head was in a totally different place when playing this, not sleeping or meditating, but just doing some stupid manual labour behind the computer and this cassette was on repeat for maybe three or four times in a single row. I wasn't bored with it, nor lazy to get up and change it, but I rather enjoyed the washes of tones, the soft tinkling of bells, seagull, all on this lousy rainy day and while I couldn't resist thinking of new age music, especially in 'Nest' when the guitar starts to produce these Göttsching like notes. I am no fan of new age music and this new release by Wil Bolton came suspiciously close, but I still would like to give him the benefits o doubt and say it's not new age, but a very friendly form of ambient music.