Tom Eaton: How It Happened
Spotted Peccary Music

Tom Eaton's so perfect a fit for Spotted Peccary's roster, it's a wonder it didn't happen sooner. Having been involved in the production of hundreds of albums since his first commercial studio opened in 1993, the composer, multi-instrumentalist, and soundscape artist brings a wealth of experience to his debut for the label; in addition, he's worked as co-producer and engineer with Windham Hill Records founder Will Ackerman for nearly a decade, and in early 2016 Eaton released his first solo recording, the well-received abendromen, followed by indesterren a mere eight months later.

The pastoral serenity that infuses his music can be traced in part to the setting out of which it originates, specifically his home on the northern coast of Massachusetts. To that end, the eight tracks on How It Happened were purportedly drawn from his experiences along the rivers and in the woods of New Hampshire, New Orleans, Vermont, and Massachusetts, such locales naturally lending themselves to contemplation and musical expressions redolent of nature's bountiful beauty. The message is communicated loud and clear, not only in the beautiful outdoors photographs displayed on the CD package and eight-page insert but also in the text adorning the inner sleeve wherein Eaton champions the benefits of exploring on foot and slowing down to facilitate clarity of vision; in his own estimation, “Stepping out of the human world makes me a more complete human in some ways, and the slowing of my pace speaks through the music.” As his pensive material plays, you just might find yourself wanting to dust off those well-worn copies of Walden and Leaves of Grass and head to the nearest park to reacquaint yourself with them.

Whatever separation there is between nature and the technologies used to assemble his material dissolves when the material floods the listening space. Playing piano, synthesizers, guitars (acoustic and electric), basses (fretted and fretless), accordion, and percussion, Eaton creates soothing vistas that both give physical form to a sensitive introspective sensibility and distill the natural wonders around us into musical being. A seasonal dimension is intimated by the positioning of “Ice” at the beginning, the suggestion being that the glacial chill of winter will soon give way to the splendours of spring and summer. In this meditative overture, softly exhaling synth washes and crystalline electric guitar textures blend to form a peaceful pathway for the seven similarly attuned evocations that follow. Like a flower blossoming or clouds parting, “An Unexpected Opening” warms the recording with the quiet radiance of graceful piano patterns and shimmering synth tones. The sometimes eerie stillness of nature, especially during its twilight hours, is conveyed by the patient unfurl of “Later, at Night, By the Lake”; by comparison, “The Fog and the Lifting” opts for carefully calibrated uplift in its delicate interplay of piano and guitar, after which the recording culminates with the soothing ambient drift of “Until Her Eyelids Flutter Open.”

June 2019