As the world gets crazier, I’ve sought more calming music to center me and bring me peace. Ambient music is always good for that, and I found a good one recently in Early Fern’s recent release, Memory Garden. The record comes to us via Texas-based label Aural Canyon, which has become one of my go-to resources for new relaxing but also interesting ambient tunes.
Early Fern is a trans composer who uses synthesizers, samplers, software, and traditional instruments to create exploratory pastoral music about memory, place, and being in the world. Memory Garden is Early Fern’s first release with Aural Canyon. It’s an attempt to create a transcendent sonic space informed by the nature of repetitive farm labor and many daily observations of non-human life during their last two years working on farms.
Early Fern tells us that the music is about being a person “surrounded by bugs and worms, light and air, soil and compost, snow, fog, and rain.” It’s also about giving into nostalgia, cultivating reflection, and attempting to create a transcendent experience of human life while beset by mundane joys, sorrows, poverty, hardship, and rural isolation.
Memory Garden consists of four lengthy instrumental songs that mix the soundscapes of ambient music with a soft edge of psychedelic exploration, creating a fascinating listening journey that feels like the sonic equivalent of sleeping in the woods at night surrounded by insects and other creatures.
The music buzzes and pulses with life, such as in the warm synth and jittering percussion of “Caterpillar.” “Gnats Dancing In The Sunlight” feels like a deep exploration into Early Fern’s pastoral reveries, perhaps reflecting her thoughts and daydreams while working on the farm.
“Milky Weather” is smoother and more sensual, as Early Fern bathes us in sound. The record closes with “They Live In The Soil,” which is replete with a veritable symphony of electronic sounds that enveloped this listener.
The world is unwell at the moment. We need music to connect to a deep place inside us where we can reconnect with something good. Early Fern provides that with Memory Garden. Use these sonic poems to guide your next meditation session as we all try to get by the best we can.
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