The Hardy Tree - All the Hours

A Closer Listen

We love Clay Pipe Music’s Mini CD series, and the latest entry is a beautiful 20-minute piece by label founder Frances Castle, recording as The Hardy Tree. Castle is also responsible for the illustration, and the work is the score to a “slow moving animation” that was inspired by the artwork of the artist’s previous album: a new form of exquisite corpse.

All the Hours is also a perfect piece for the transition between seasons, as it helps listeners to think about time by reflecting the passage of a day.  This day acts as a microcosm of a season, filled with small changes that accumulate over time, until the end is far from the start.  The external art reflects the day, while the internal art reflects the night.

More than anything, the piece simply flows.  A humble beginning sets the patterns in motion, after which they seem to develop on their own, although we know that Castle is behind them.  The tone of Clay Pipe Music is encapsulated here: bucolic, tender, with a feeling of nostalgia.  In the opening minutes, one thinks of the promise of a day that has not yet unfolded.  The flute loops tumble with synth patterns like two hands performing a pas de deux around a clock.  Late in the first quarter, the electronic instruments recall the sound of a harp, while early in the second quarter, they imitate brass: the heart of the day, when the faces of the flowers are turned toward the sun.

Midway through the piece, percussion enters like light fireworks.  The timbre may be ambient, but the impression is one of wakefulness: the sprawling afternoon, perhaps in a countryside, the hours (and on this CD3″, minutes) beginning to blend together.  And yet, one has already traveled far into the day, and if one were able to look back over time as one does over a field, one would realize the distance covered.  An intense peace begins to enter, like a pillow on top of another pillow.  Night is approaching, ever sooner now that the season is ending.  Yet at the same time, the air grows thick with new sounds, like the crickets of night supplanting the doves of morning.  While we sleep, an entirely new set of creatures awakens.  Closing the piece in glistenings and eight-chord loops, Castle sets the clock spinning like the blue earth through the indigo night.  (Richard Allen)