It is difficult to review ‘Music to Watch Seeds Grow By 007’ as an ordinary album. After all, converting the biological data of a sunflower into the digital input of a modular synth sounds like the plot of an episode of Red Dwarf, or at very best the bizarre experiment of a crazed hobbyist with too many spare wires (and perhaps time). Nevertheless, Brian D’Souza, better known by his pseudonym Auntie Flo, managed to give a voice to the silent song of his son’s sunflower by way of a meditative electronic ambience. Like all MTWSGB projects, once again nature and technology are married together in zen.
Standing at 56 minutes, the near hour zoomed by in a spacey dream state. Each track seemed to blur into the next, sounding like the background thrums of a starship engine. Such avant-garde ambience is difficult to describe in terms of musical elements, as it throws concepts such as harmony and melody out the window in favour of a space-age soundscape I imagine is popular on Mars. The warm swells create notions of chords, and percussive bells generate some kind of melody, but what lies at the project’s core is the undeniable state of peace which must reside within the biodata of flora.
Second track ‘Germination’ seems to have the most harmonic direction, with distinguishable chord swells generated to form an albeit random but soothing structure. ‘Irrigation’ features more trebly, almost bell-like twinkles, which give it a light texture, like metallic rainfall, grounded by the thrum of a bass tone. The bass is prone to forming a warm layer of dissonance, and strange modulations to the unexpected generate a kind of tension, but never so much as to arouse a nervousness in me. I was always calm.
‘Heliotropism’ features more percussive whirs and whistles, creating a kind of bounce. It’s a long track, and the least developing, per se. Herein, for me, lies the danger of such ambient projects. It can be seen again in the later track ‘Sunshine, Freedom, and a Little Flower’, which begins with a drone, soon accompanied by tickling twinkles. The modular rainfall grows more intense as the track goes on, above a layer of more swells which oscillate between rich and thin, eventually dying out and ending the track quietly.
‘Sunshine’ stands as the longest track on the album, close to twenty minutes. Perhaps it’s just me and my ever shortening attention span, but long and directionally stagnant odysseys such as this are the hardest to get through. To criticise a sunflower’s biological activity seems crude, but as a piece of music it feels like a comforting embrace which, however warm, perhaps goes on a bit too long.
My personal favourite track on the project is ‘Stand Tall’, which seems to have the most tension to it. It begins with a menacing drone, the kind of thing one would imagine hearing as your small freighter finds itself stuck in the tractor beam of an Imperial starship. Higher pitched pulses form a melody unbound by conventional rhythms and time signatures, sometimes stuttering, sometimes whining. At just over four and a half minutes, it seems an ideal length for ambience: not so short that nothing happens, but (ironically) also not so long that nothing happens, either.
The final track on the album is ‘Hector’s Sunflower’. Underlined by an almost 8-bit shimmering swell of a modular synth pad, an optimistic crystalline pulsing of more bell sounds create a calming feeling that had me picturing a Martian sunset. How strange, I thought, that a sunflower could generate a sort of space-age nostalgia for an extraterrestrial future I had never seen.
In a world of constantly fast-paced, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it pop tunes, ‘Music To Grow Seeds By 007’ is a trance-inducing moment to breathe. All MTGSB projects are designed with the intention of gardening whilst listening. Thus, context is key when reviewing such a project. From a purely objective point of view, the album’s digital textures, soundscapes, warm harmonies and scratch-itching twinkles are its strongest aspects. Perhaps this is a more personal qualm with ambience as a genre, but, for me, some of the tracks droned on a little too long. That being said, as background music, the project is perfectly suited to elevate you out of harsh concrete reality, and alleviate earthly anxieties. It is a beautiful chance at meditation, the mantra of a sunflower translated by Brian D’Souza’s incredible musical abilities.
Music To Watch Seeds Grow By 007: Brian d’Souza (Sunflowers) is out now via A State Of Flow
https://auntieflo.bandcamp.com/album/music-to-watch-seeds-grow-by-007-brian-d-souza-sunflowers
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