Review: Wil Bolton - Inscriptions

Inscriptions is a piece of driftwood. Content to simply exist, falling slack into the tide of sensation. Complying with the movement of nature, enacting a dialogue between consciously directed sound (or “music”, if you will), and the organic flux of field recording. Bolton performs through the act of listening. His guitar strums are delicate, as though his hand is being swung by the gusts of autumnal breeze, while the melodies materialise as minor keys that sway gently back and forth, exciting the noise of dehydrated leaves as they pass through. Gradually, he renders himself as a figment of the environment, as essential to the landscape as those pale placid lakes and crisp, awakening autumn temperatures.

Bolton has also devised a wonderful means through which to channel the season’s association with decay and fading light. Re-sampled records wink with erosion and hum from beneath the dust, serene and yet somewhat dramatic for how they chart the slope into eventual death. Inscriptions glows with the glory of a former state – that vivacious burst of summer – and carries itself graciously, slowly, into monochromatic dormancy. Within the lingering contemplation of these pieces, licked with the flare of electronics, the crack of dying wood and fluid plectrum cascades, I remember to be present and relish the state of seasonal transition, like taking pleasure in how grains of sand pour out between the gaps of my fingers. Inscriptions is no longer what was. Inscriptions is not yet what it will be.