The music on this cassette was composed for an audio-visual collaboration Adkins did with painter Andy Fullalove in the Bradford Cathedral in 2016. It was a “response to the newly restored altarpiece by William Morris as well as the priceless stained glass windows in the cathedral by Morris’ company”, and Adkins was inspired by the “layering and textures of Fullalove’s paintings”. He wanted to create music “to induce a sense of meditation, contemplation and reflection” and used sounds from the church organ. Both sides have one piece of music, entirely in the spirit of the two albums I heard of Adkins previously (Vital Weekly 768 and 825), especially the later, which I noted for bridging the gap between Niblock and Mathieu. These two pieces are definitely more Stephan Mathieu, and less Niblock, with its slow flowing minimal drone settings. Both of these pieces, ‘Sounds Of The Shadows’ and ‘Sounds Of The Sun’ are very similar in how they were made and how they sound. Deep organ like sounds, no doubt in some way transformed by computer technology (slowed down, looped, that sort of thing) and coming to you in a variety of layers, slowly making away for each other, pushing one up, taking another one down and then going back to the first, and this for whatever the duration is of this cassette; I must admit I was kind of lost when it came to that, reading a more complex book on musical history at the same time. This music worked best if played at a considerable softer volume and let it flow gently through whatever space you are in to hear this. Headphones, I would say, could work but you miss out on the spatial character of the music, which I guess is an all-important feature of this music. (FdW)
via Neural