Along the Coppermine Ridge, the new album from celebrated Spotted Peccary artist Rudy Adrian, is like the essence of landscape photography in sonic form. Here, in vast texture and shimmering chimes, Adrian conjures dense forests and dramatic mountain crests, breeze-buffeted snowdrifts and swirling cloud formations of self-reflection. Each of these eleven pieces evokes a subtle, but stunning view of the natural world, and once again proves Adrian a master ambient architect.
Adrian’s compositions are simultaneously rich and spare, like the symphony of sounds one hears in a quiet clearing. Opener “Castle Rocks” paints a vista in strokes of dreamlike piano, the sigh of morning fog over a jagged cliffside. “Moorlands” is an endless horizon in a mirage of texture, its subtle drones like gusts of wind through grassy plains—before a bright chime shines through like a sunbeam. “Alpine Tarn” grounds sun-dappled chimes under a pulsing heartbeat, the cold breath of snow-bright evergreens.
Born and raised in New Zealand, Adrian drew inspiration from renowned New Zealand nature photographer John Johns, whose work was once admired by Ansel Adams and is now honored in the New Zealand National Museum. Fulfilling a lifelong dream, Adrian adeptly uses the language of music and electronic instruments to underscore the essence of this inspiration, and to convey the majestic and mysterious visual that in a moment captures an awe-filled experience of nature, elevating it from phenomenal to ephemeral.
 
Genre: Atmospheric / Space / Deep Listening
 
Rudy Adrian | Along The Coppermine Ridge | CD