The world is full of noise, from the sound of cars, lorries and planes, the chatter of people in crowds or on the tinny speakers of mobile phones, music from shops, let alone the internal din of our own thoughts vying for attention with the outside world. The music of Andy Aquarius has the ability to quieten the cacophony with the gentle susseration of his harp strings and understated quality of his sonorous voice on a few songs. His new album Vale of Tears is another beautiful collection of tracks that could calm even the most active of inner monologues.
It was inspired and recorded during a 7-day retreat that was his way of repairing the damage done by modern life; what he calls a “continuous & worsening spiritual crisis”. It was a way of blocking out everything and using the remoteness of a space deep in the Croatian mountains to draw from its energy and be truly in the moment. Aquarius says, “This is the solitary fruit of my hermitic practice – seven days, from dawn till dusk, spent in a retired Church of the Holy Cross, tucked away deep in the Croatian mountains. Seven days and it was done. With the final closing of the door, this record was hermetically sealed in thyme & spathe, not a single note was added nor retouched – what you are hearing now is the breathing marrow of what occurred then.” The wordplay on thyme for time and spathe for space is particularly impressive as English is not Aquarius’s first language.
He connects deeply with nature, and this seems to act as a conduit for him to connect spiritually to all living things, similar to the mycorrhizal network which exchanges nutrients and acts as a form of underground communication in the forest. While many of his releases, such as February’s Schlafes Bruder, recorded with Kimi Recor, are studio-based, Aquarius is not afraid of improvisation and one of my albums is 2024’s Forest Grimoire where he is recording alone in the forest with only the wind in the trees and birdsong to accompany his harp.
Andy Aquarius uses his harp like a water diviner uses their rods; but instead of seeking ancient sources of power held in ley lines and stone circles he already understands that the power of nature is already there if we only stop of listen. His music is a proxy for those of us who cannot travel the depths of the forest or retired churches in the mountains. I don’t believe he is a man out of time, like a medieval knight who has guarded the grail for centuries, he has a great sense of humour as demonstrated by the line about buying a cassette which is “tailored to effortlessly disappear in any of your cassock’s folds” and the fact that every lush physical release of his I have bought has been addressed to ‘Lord Paul Cook’; which pleases me greatly.
Andy Aquarius claims the album is flawed due to the near impossible task of marrying external stimulus with his inner self and trying to condense it into a recording. However, to me, I hear the human in the celestial, and it makes me appreciate that striving for perfection, or being in a perfect moment, often illudes us. I am far from being a religious man but listening to the music of Andy Aquarius inspires in me a sense of spiritual connection (often referred to as SBNR) that often feels frustratingly out of reach in a world caught in a tussle between authenticity and artificiality. Listening to any of his releases can help quieten the dissonance for a short while and that is a beautiful thing.
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Review by Paul F Cook
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