Grey skies, tar-coated pavements and murky, piss-scented bus stations, these are the usual facets attached to urban life and its unhealthy idiosyncrasies, as our cities quietly turn into dystopian spaces where the struggle for fresh air has become an essential concern and raising a child in this environment, a growingly whimsical heresy.
Having left his home region of Northern England for the concrete-clad, expressionist architecture of Berlin, James Booth never quite lost his privileged relation with nature. Even though his music could at first inspire an essentially synthetic, techno-friendly feel that’s a lot more to do with the age of computer and virtuality, its sleek varnish rapidly cracks to display the teeming, fruitful organic life at work beyond its shapely curves.
A childlike ode to the beauty of our world, ‘Views From My Shed‘ EP breaks in Booth’s new alias The Gardener on the ever cheerful and consistent No Bad Days, which you shall undoubtedly and to our greater pleasure hear more of in the near future.
If the A-side was conceived as a soundtrack to “animals and plants playing and growing“, being in Booth’s own words the “music of the garden, as if it just happened and was not written“, the flip side presents “more straightforward tracks written from the viewpoint of the Gardener“.
Going further into it, Booth explains: “The project is about nature and more specifically my relationship with nature. My music is almost never conceptual, but The Gardener was made especially to fit an idea and a vision. I was raised in the British countryside so this music is a celebration of that and a way of reconnecting with that now that I live in cities. It’s a way of celebrating nature and getting away from modern life for a short relaxing journey.”
Taken from the more groovy B-side, the delicately bouncy number ‘Stones & Minerals‘ – which you can now stream in full down below – is a lively jaunt in the back yard, smooth and fragrant as a bee slide across poppy fields and versicolor flowerbeds. Elegiac and rousing like Midori Takada meets Mort Garson’s ‘Plantasia‘, this one is on rinse mode at the office. If the Chinese government need a new hymn for their recently launched ‘Forest City’ concept, they’ve found it.
Exclusive communication from No Bad Days includes hints at exciting new projects with music from across Asia, North America and Australasia to hit the streets later this year in addition to the inception of an exclusive edit-focused white label… so better keep your eyes peeled! More global, more feels, more vibes converging this year and beyond.
Views From My Shed EP is released via No Bad Days on 14th July, pre-order a copy from Bandcamp.
TRACKLIST
A1. Lilac Moor (Parts 1-4)
B1. Secret Trail
B2. Water Clock
B3. Stones & Minerals
Discover more about The Gardener and No Bad Days on Inverted Audio.