A strong selection of field recordings pepper the gentle songs of The Story Surrounds Us. Australian Kate Carr now lives in London, and she’s brought a fresh selection of recordings, taken during her travels around the globe, that both soothe and shock.

These recordings are scattered over and throughout the music, sometimes rolling through arid, absent spaces that lack comfort or reassurance, missing the high definition of a point A to B; cartography is absent as the lifespan of the music diminishes. This in turn opens the door – the creaking, body-aching door that opens the record, perhaps – to a subtle displacement which is not so much associated with the outer geography of the place itself but rather with a series of troubled thoughts and processes that constantly blitz the inner self; these inner lands try to find peace and rest, but it’s hard to find solace among the screeching midnight insects.

These recordings are ushered into the midst of guitar…

If there is a state of sonic lucid dream, Félicia Atkinson could serve as a guide to its realms. Electronic pioneers like Delia Derbyshire might have opened that door, but Atkinson’s carefully crafted and deeply immersive minimal soundscapes, woven through ASMR spoken word snippets, invite you to step further in. Contrary to being detached from reality, this ambitious recording is a triumph in synthesis and interconnectivity, honoring its title.  A sense of otherworldly is paired with the familiar, the macabre with the sensual.  Dreams and reality go fluidly and fittingly together, as contemporary midi textures with historical Buchla or Serge accents.

Atkinson recorded „Hand In Hand at home in Brittany and at EMS Studio in Stockholm.  Her readings of desert and architectural magazines, botanical guides and sci-fi novels flow seamlessly into the album, along with her other contemporary artistic practices.

Most immediately influenced by Derbyshire’s aesthetics, especially The Dreams, Hand…