Rhucle: The Water
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Tomosla: Moor to Sea
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At just over twenty-three minutes, Rhucle's The Water is more mini-album than full-length, but the material's lovely nonetheless. The music represents a further refinement of the sound the Tokyo-based ambient artist has been developing since initiating the Rhucle project in 2013. He earlier appeared on Home Normal in collaborations with David Cordero on Summer Chronicles and So Far, So Close and now intimates more clearly where Cordero left off on those releases and Rhucle began.

At its most tumultuous and unstoppable, water threatens with danger and death; on this project, its calm and gentle sides are emphasized, the result a serenading set of atmospheric vignettes. In place of engulfing ocean waves, The Water evokes the image of a tranquil, largely still pond designed for immersion. Below its placid surfaces, much is happening, however. Almost every one of the nine pieces is a miniature lasting two to three minutes, yet each establishes a strong character in spite of that brevity. Par for the ambient course, piano, synthesizers, and field recordings are utilized for the tracks' construction, yet there's no denying the appeal of the result. Rhucle's spent a decade finessing his sound, and it shows in the nuance and control of these pieces. Subtle gestures and textures work hand in hand to create evocative soundscapes that while short are vivid.

Like a new day freshly dawning, “Ring of Light” introduces the release with softly glimmering tones, string accents, and wisps of angelic vocal textures; distant traces of bird sounds enhance the peaceful aura of the scene. With the end of day approaching and its title referencing an early summer's night, the second setting casts the music as a twilit hush tailor-made to induce a sleep state. The transition from winter to spring's evoked by the title “Begins to Melt,” and sure enough the shimmering sound portrait suggests a segue from icy chill to liquidy flow. Later a water station-themed setting presents a more robust stream of piano sprinkles and hazy flute-like tones. Rhucle's music never hurries; instead, it finds ever new ways of soothing the listener with gently flowing arrangements of acoustic and electronic elements. Mastered by Ian Hawgood with his usual care, The Water is otherwise a whole-scale Rhucle product, the artist having written, mixed, and produced the music and contributed the cover image too. Inconvertibly, it's a compact release but an undeniably absorbing and inviting one too.

In contrast to the brevity and concision of The Water, Tomosla's Moor to Sea is its polar opposite, temporally speaking, when the four meditations on James Osland and Thomas Hoey's set extend from ten to twenty-three minutes. On the duo's first outing for the label under the Tomosla name, the pair present soundscapes whose expanse and incremental change mirror the transition referenced by the album title. As the music advances, the view seems to shift panoramically as it would were one physically present scanning the landscape, taking in the effects of light, and absorbing the site's nature soundtrack.

The glistening tones that speckle the opening moments of “Twin Source” could be taken for light reflecting off a water feature's surface, while the percussive accents and whispering textures suggest the presence of distant creatures and wind, respectively. Tinkling sounds sparkle through a gossamer haze as the collaborators fill their soundscapes with all manner of shimmering detail. The music's effect is calm-inducing, the material rich in detail and abundant in activity yet tranquil nonetheless. The elemental, time-transcending character of land and sea are captured convincingly, even if electronics and synthesizers are deployed to achieve it. That's never more apparent than in “Drawn From Stone” where lulling synthesizer patterns intone alongside dense wind gusts for thirteen engulfing minutes. A rather more ethereal, even celestial effect is achieved in “Split by Light,” the impression created in this case of leaving the land surface to float serenely high above.

September 2026