A Closer Listen
This is the first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. As followers have come to expect, it is also the day to uncork a new edition of VISUALS Wine’s Ritual of Senses series. Sunspill completes the third year of the series, which since 2022 has been uniting meteorologists, music lovers and oenophiles in a unique and multi-sensory fashion.
Amazingly, the wine looks like bottled sunshine. Titled “Of Nothingness, Glistening,” the aperitif wine already sings of hazy days and languid nights, accompanying music that is similarly hazy and bright, although neither humid nor hot. Sleep Number (Sophie Hull) channels the spirit of Cocteau Twins and Mazzy Star, with a slightly more occluded edge: mysterious music like a barely recollected dream.
From the scent, one already detects hints of apricot and orange, the promise of a summer in full bloom. As one begins to sip, wildflower undercurrents bubble to the surface. Made in conjunction with the artist, “Of Nothing, Glistening” is a tricky title, as this is indeed something, but something difficult to capture, like the perfect summer so many envision, but whose bottling is as elusive as the aforementioned dream. Drones arise like heat shimmer on the surface of a lake, rippling and bending, yielding exotic colors and textures. Hull’s voice dips just below and above the surface, tantalizingly near, like the identification of the missing ingredient lying on the tip of the tongue, which turns out, rewardingly, to be agave.
Solo guitar chords launch “Hours Like Embers,” solidifying the set’s association with time and its ephemeral nature. First come the notes, then the echo, the reverberation, the decay. This season, too, will pass. But when the synths enter, one is enticed out of reverie to movement: a walk in the fields, an opportunity to enjoy the sunspill as something more than a framed window effect. The closing minute offers perhaps the album’s most gorgeous stretch: a layering of pure vocals, as if each beam of the sun were laid atop the one before it.
While the opening track is the album‘s title track there is also a title track for the aperitif wine. “Nothingness, Glistening” expands Hull’s tonal palette, as the higher and brighter pitches imply bagpipes. Music, like wine, contains a multitude of underlying associations. The artist imagines the wine while composing; afterward, the wine conjures the memory of the song. Eventually, all is subsumed by the haze.
When “Embers” returns, it does so with bubbles and birds; the synth notes, like sparkles in a stream, fire and fade away, while the rush of the flow remains. We have topped off our glass of wine, keeping it cool as the mountain waters. The alcohol and music dislodge the recipient from time, so when one reaches “Endless, If You Let It,” one understands. Sunspill‘s seams are nearly invisible; when one pours wine into wine, one is unable to distinguish the earlier from the later. Everything flows together in a state of grace. While enjoying this experience on the solstice, one can imagine an endless summer. The sun spills into the music and into the glass; summer enters through the eyes, the lips and the ears; we have become one with the season. (Richard Allen)
Purchase the wine and cassette package here!
Fri Jun 20 00:01:18 GMT 2025