WL//WH Premiere: THE BALLOONIST Replicates Memory Decay in “Growing and Learning”

WL//WH Premiere The Balloonist Wayside & Woodland Recordings

Tirelessly sound explorer of the echoes, vibrations and the ever-shifting colours from the perennial fall-tinged Staffordshire countryside since 1999 with his partner Rob Glover (The Toy Library) as the cult Post-Rock/Dream-pop institution epic45, as well as his solo endeavours Birds In The Brickwork, and My Autumn Empire, British multi-instrumentalist and composer Ben Holton, under his other eclectic moniker, The Balloonist, unveils an experimental DIY music video for “Growing and Learning”,

a ‘glorious slice of Kosmische Ambient Dream Pop’, taken from The Balloonist’s 5th full-length album, “Spirit Duplicator,” dropped in early October, via his co-founded DIY label Wayside & Woodland Recordings, which WL//WH is pleased to premiere.

Crafted using an array of electro-acoustic instrumentation (guitar, synths, penny whistle, recorder, bass, drums & drum programming), “Spirit Duplicator” assembles twelve fragments of faraway recollections from an English childhood of the mid-Eighties: the echo of the school hall, Pet Shop Boys cassettes on a cheap tape player, TV themes on rainy afternoons… They strive to transmit how these memories warp, lose focus and crumble as the years roll on.

Immersive, colorful, and serene, “Growing and Learning” marches on at a lively yet gentle pace, settling into lingering hues of images blurred by the passage of time, to build both imaginative and perceptive, reflective aural wholes, moved by melancholic intrigue nestled at the margins of memory.

Steady, crisp programmed beats with soft reverberating bass pulses lie as a constantly shifting foundation for vibrant rippling streams of upward-fluttering vaporous synths and sad, anxious hushed tinkly keys, layered with effect-laden, airy gleaming guitar atmospherics, stretched chirpy strains, and luminescent arpeggios, to expand temperature, depth, and clarity, like an underwater dream

The video is deliberately ‘damaged’ looking as I’m trying to replicate the sense of memories decaying and fragmenting over time. Tape wear and video damage, but also bad digital transfers on old computers, using early codecs, glitching and corrupting over time. Copies of copies of copies of copies of.Ben says

It leads me to think of how video and audio can be captured so perfectly now, unchanging over time and crystal clear. I wonder how that will affect future nostalgia and memory recollection? The only corruption left being the sinister influence of LLMs and generative ‘AI’. Memories shaped into whatever you want them to be.Ben continues

In the paired visuals by Ben Holton himself, a cloudy filter is placed over stirring outdoor nature scenes. About halfway through, a human face appears inside the faint hazy layer whilst the wind blows across a field of yellow wildflowers. The combination of the gently blowing blossoms, the person, and the blurry veil makes it impossible to see any fine details; just abstract similarities. Finally, grainy bars of disconnection appear, changing what was once a smooth yet fuzzy pathway through the woods into a gloomy grey overcast maze.

The Balloonist‘s new album, “Spirit Duplicator”, is out now, via the South Staffordshire and The West Midlands-based independent record label and photography publisher Wayside & Woodland Recordings Bandcamp.

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