Winterwood: Wind Music

Creatively, East Cape Calling co-founders Zac and Holly Winterwood experienced a plethora of fine moments in 2022.

Not least the series of excellent releases via East Cape Calling (namely photo(sphere)’s self-titled debut and Barnaby Oliver’s My Arms Are Hollow Tubes), but with their Winterwood project, Zac and Holly extracted countless diamonds from the quarry, including Exploratory Guitar and Exploratory Guitar: Falling Tide. Both releases still primary go-tos from week-to-week, with the latter offering featuring at the pointy end of our Top 50 Albums of 2022.

Winterwood weren’t done, however, and shortly after the publication of our Top 50 releases of the year, the duo unleashed Wind Music; perhaps their most definitely piece of work etched to tape.

Offered as a single 40 minute composition, Wind Music – said to be inspired by a casuarina tree from Zac’s childhood home in rural Victoria – is divided into six separate phases. The result is an ambient record that gracefully swims through the subconscious.

40 minutes of gentle sonic sketches that burst with fantastical imagery, Wind Music evokes an array of tones and colours that scratch at the corners of the mind. It’s music that guides you into the mediative state, transcendental and, in many ways, an out-of-body experience. While the aforementioned Exploratory Guitars releases evoked similar feelings, the methods employed here are vastly different, with nature-inspired field recordings and soft washes of synth providing the primary colours to the canvass.

Entwining nostalgia with a future word, Winterwood uncannily connect these dots by creating a history of sound. While they may be biographical collages detailed meticulously through endless space and warm sonics, there’s a transparency with these recordings that the listener can relate to by delving back into their own past. It’s hard to explain, but the best art often is, and with Wind Music, Winterwood reveal their finest moment.

Wind Music is out now via Florina Cassettes. Purchase from Bandcamp.