It’s been too long since we’ve heard from Valotihkuu, who makes his welcome return with Drifting Between Seasons. The timing is perfect; today is the first day of March and meteorological spring, while astronomical spring is still three weeks away; the album is released this Friday. During this liminal period, one may claim residency in either season, or both; one day a blizzard may arrive, another will bring t-shirt weather. Even so, one knows that one season, inevitably, will end.
The album is built upon fragments of tape that had been discarded during the production of prior works. These snippets act like seeds, while the additional instrumentation and field recordings are like fresh rainwater and good soil. The music itself becomes a metaphor for new life, springing forth from the old. Just as a seed lies dormant, these strips of sound lay below the sonic earth, germinating in secret, waiting for their time to sprout.
The album begins with the rustle of the forest: snowmelt, early birds, quiet wind. Twinkling bells imitate the sun sparkling through the pines. Then the twins of precipitation begin to dance: early rain, late snow. The droplets turn to flakes and back again. The snow returns to the sky and then returns to the earth: an unending cycle in which the form of matter morphs while the molecules remain the same. In like matter, one might reflect on the ways in which people may change and revert and change again: same bodies, different mindsets.
And yet, through all the cycles, there is still forward motion, as expressed in the pairing of “Fading Footsteps in White” and “Threads of Warmth.” The past and the future are engaged in a tug of war, but only one can win. Valotihkuu’s timbre is wistful and nostalgic; the bells of “Fading Footsteps” retreat as slowly as white outlines beneath a warming sun, giving way to apricity. Windows open wide to the warming sun. The birdsong increases in “Warmth;” the thicket of sound grows dense, while the distant whoosh of traffic can be heard.
By “Winter’s Last Whisper,” it is time to say goodbye to one season and hello to another, making Kenard Pak’s children’s book Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring the perfect accompaniment. But the album is about more than seasons; it is about how we rescue valuable parts of ourselves we had once discarded, how we reinvent ourselves, and how we create something shiny, sparkling and new, with an equal or greater value of its own. (Richard Allen)
