Seamus O'Muineachain: Island of Flowers

A Seamus O'Muineachain recording is part tone poem and part daydream. It mostly consists of notes and melodies, but those ingredients are no more or less important than shimmering drones or stray nature sounds. This is an emotionscape drawn from life. The music is not in the notes but the whole experience, crafted with a slow thoughtfulness that invites deep listening to soak in all the feelings. 

With a catalogue already centered around calmness and quietude, O'Muineachain generally needs no reminder to breathe and savor the moment, but the new prospect of parenthood provided another reason all the same. With that special jumble of emotions to inspire it, Island of Flowers is a radiant listen packed with wistfulness and hope. This is an EP of short-and-sweet pieces that flow and drift like small creatures inhabiting a series of small tide pools, centered around a series of beautifully simple piano patterns and spinning a rich soundscape around them, vivid enough to fill the whole listening space.

Light percussion and floating synth clouds come and go in colorful swirls, sometimes livening things up enough to move out of ambient territory, but making the atmosphere no less dreamlike. Hazy tones gradually trade places with field recordings of streams or insects. The tones do not feel attached to any particular time or genre, and so the overall mix feels like it was not composed so much as pulled straight out of his head. As always with this catalogue—though a little extra deep and rich this time around—the key is patience and a willingness to look for the beauty in the simple and ordinary.