In their Perfect Potting mix for Bleep’s mix series, Holly Childs and Gediminas Žygus have created a wonderful companion piece to their LP Hydrangea. Much like that album, Perfect Potting is a stunning hour of music which fashions new sonic vistas from a huge variety of styles - avant-garde balladry, futurist gabber and various schools of 20th Century classical music to name but three. The fact that Fatima Al Qadiri, Goldie, Elysia Crampton and John Cage are all in the tracklisting here should signpost just how wide Childs and Žygus have cast their net, but the focus and vision with which the pieces are combined is hugely impressive. From its weightless, heavily classical opening section, through the boundary-pushing songcraft of its midsection and onto its increasingly beat-driven second-half, Perfect Potting is a testament to the artistic ambition of its creators.
Perfect Potting Mix is what we listened to when we were making the Hydrangea album. The soil, a ground. Movie soundtracks, orchestral wind, talk tracks, sucking in air, in a tunnel, jingles, artists who are musicians, waking in a UV dream, by a pond, down the garden path, where night-time is strange and there’s always a sunrise.
Romantic feral petal
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6.16am
Feeding air plants banana peels
Sharing nasturtium sandwiches with watercolour painters
And the results?
Acid rose
