As with many of these “revisiting” posts it’s something of a treat to revisit Virginia Astley’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.
It conjures a sense of an Arcadian idyll, of never-ending sunny afternoons in a secluded garden in some indefinable past time where the birds sing, the flowers bloom and the inhabitants can laze on striped deckchairs from now to eternity…
…but, and here’s the rub, there’s a flipside or undertow to that idyll; as Summer of Their Dreams segues into When the Fields Were on Fire subtly dissonant reversed glitchy sounds now accompany the piano and seem to almost submerge the sounds of the church bells and bird song and there is a sense of something foreboding off on the horizon.
The sense of calm returns with the final track It’s Too Hot to Sleep as an owl hoots repeatedly in the distance, and as I said in the post about the album from the first year of A Year In The Country “it’s like saying hello once more to a very welcome old friend”.
The original post published during the first year of A Year In The Country:
