Wil Bolton - Slow Shapes (2025)

Slow Shapes is a paean to the English countryside, inspired by a stay in the Peak District; long walks through heathered moorland, limestone valleys, and sweeping gritstone escarpments.

Field recordings capture birdsong, the rustling of branches and leaves in the wind, gently babbling streams and the distant echoes of farm machinery.

Warm analogue keyboard tones and mellotron piano, string and woodwind loops fray and unfurl over slowly shifting and enveloping layers of modular synthesizer oscillators.

Heavily processed through pedal and modular effects, the picturesque and pastoral quality of the lyrical melodies and drones are counteracted with subtle glitches and distressed textures that reflect the harsher side of nature, the effects of time and weather that have hewn the sublime beauty of the landscape’s peaks and vales.