Landtitles: Your Voice In Pieces
Slowcraft Records

How to translate sweetly nostalgic longing into sound form? Your Voice In Pieces, the Landtitles debut on Slowcraft by composer, photographer, and Vancouver Island resident Grant Gard, offers something of a one-stop instruction guide. Begin with bleached-out photographs of a suburban neighbourhood and hikers traipsing through nature; continue by fashioning the musical presentation so that the album's gentle reveries appear to be coming to you through a hazy filter. Musical elements are smeared with static and hiss and thereby suggest recordings weathered by time yet resonant still.

Gard birthed the recording's eleven evocations from cassette and reel-to-reel loops of synthesizer, guitar, melodica, dulcimer, piano, field recordings, and other elements that were then subjected to further shaping in Argeïphontes Lyre and Reaper. However involved the production process might have been, the results never feel overworked; instead, they exude a relaxed calm that naturally conjures images of peaceful outdoor settings and lazy summer afternoons. Close your eyes as “Groupings” or “A Vaulting of Colour” plays and you might well imagine yourself resting amidst the tall grasses of a country field with faint traces of a nearby stream part of the soundtrack.

Setting the scene, “Geranium” softly sparkles, its murmurs and rustlings like the gentle breath of nature awakening to a new day. In keeping with its title, “Sleep Symbols” simulates the replenishment that serene slumber brings and the vivid dreamscapes that emerge in tandem. The wonder and innocence of childhood infuses the mood of “Collecting a Garden,” the effect so potent the image of an overalls-clad elder inspecting planted vegetables comes to mind. Texture is paramount, and consequently even the most ambiguously titled pieces engender powerful visual associations.

May 2021