The Once-Enchanted Forest

The spring installment in my four-album seasons set: originally called "Arboretum", a title I liked a lot until I researched and found it was the name of several other albums out there.

 

Spring needed a lot more happiness and colour to overcome the depression and sadness of Icechords, so this one is less electronic and more about acoustic, real-world instruments. The acoustic guitar and string section play a bigger part, and there are also cues for traditional instruments from East Asia and Africa - particularly on "Petal Woods", the spring incarnation of "Drizzle Woods", which has now burst into glorious bloom.

 

As usual, the tracks are all personal to varying extents. Inspirations include memories of the woods near my old school where many playtimes were spent, on "Grottos in the Green" and the title track, a park I used to visit as a child (still local to me to this day), on "Stratford Park Latin", and a blackbird whose song I recorded onto my laptop as a student in the early 2010s, which became the basis for "The Busking Blackbird". (I somehow managed to lose the original recording of that blackbird's song, and he must be long dead by now, so I had to make do with a sine-wave lead.)

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