The Curious Case of Imaginary Softwoods
Synthetic pleasures by the prolific John Elliott and his spectacular solo project
Releasing quite a few solo records over the last decade, American producer John Elliott, based in Cleveland, Ohio is the artist behind the Imaginary Softwoods moniker.
Aside from curating the Spectrum Spools imprint Elliott also takes part in the bands Emeralds, Organic Dial, Outer Space, Mist, Colored Mushroom and the Medicine Rocks, and more
In its polymorphous entirety, Elliott's oeuvre, solo and in groups, belongs to a spectrum that oscillates between similar genres, a consistency of style that makes him accessible to a wider audience of electronic music fans.
From blissful new age soundscapes radiating healing frequencies to heady kosmische electronica throbbing with sequenced and modulated synths, the commonality of all these projects is analog sounds coupled with a spacey ontology, the latter manifested in the cover art, liner notes, and titles: an imaginarium evoking alternative histories of electronic music, a preoccupation with science fiction narratives, obscure sound archives, astronomical trivia and other fertile sources of cosmic wonder.
“The Path of Spectrolite” (released in 2011, along with its sister “outtake” EP “Cold Dirt and Passing Clouds”) is a prime example and perfect entry point at the ambient end of Elliott's massive output, the calmer shores where we find the Imaginary Softwoods.
Right from the opening track, the intention is clear: this is luminous, ethereal, meditative, immersive music.
Describing the sounds necessitates a flurry of evanescent adjectives piling on in a blurry haze, their purple prose accurately resembling the amorphous intensity of the music, which is the soundtrack of an intensely felt consciousness at peace with itself.
Radiating, oscillating, vibrating, expanding from a soft core that glows with ecstatic contentment, manifesting without any obvious message, it is music that rehabilitates the soul with the necessity of self-ascribed meaning, projecting potential onto the void, urging the listener to be as one with the beautiful universe and its majestic indifference.
There is nothing fey or twee about the music even at its most whimsical – it's a self-assured, confident, proud sound that fortifies with only the slightest intent to stupefy.
In a similar vein, “Gold Fiction Loop Garden”, the third solo outing by Elliott, released in 2016 as a cassette-only album, features “a collection of short loops, recorded live to two-track digital using analog synthesizers, Mellotron M400 and multiple arrays of configured FX processes”.
The liner notes sum it up accurately:
“The nine tracks are widescreen meditations on pastoral ambiance. Gently rising and falling chords, mellifluous pads that slowly fall from the sky, and ever-evolving patterns of melodic beauty range from innocent and youthful to more somber and reflective. An absorbing listen that is perfect audio therapy for the mind”.
Imaginary Softwood's self-titled debut, released in 2008, is a grainier, grittier affair.
The heady tone is set from the opening track, featuring distorted guitar feedback and moody drones reminiscent of the treated electric viola experiments of John Cage and the ritualistic improvisations of Angus McLise.
Interspersed within the late '60s improvisation vibes are minimalist interludes on keyboards, cymbals, and other odd percussion, probably synthetic.
These small, almost incidental pieces of baroque invention, belong to a so-called Court sequence, and their chamber music intentions are much less expansive, less Dionysian, and more preoccupied with formality and introspection.
Dense, moody, exotic, and unpredictable, this is a different kind of music for the topographic oceans mapping a uniquely 21st-century sonic terrain, the creation of an overloaded perception apparatus inundated with the totality of recorded history available online to even the most casual of listeners.
It's our collective ear responding at once to the disparate psycho-acoustics of radically differentiated sound sources, including but not limited to pop, video game music, movie soundtracks, ring-tones, streaming themes, notification pings, alarms, advertising jingles, social media clips, etc.
The varied tones and aesthetics of each of these aural inflection points intermingle and proliferate through our headphones, themselves an isolating device, worn almost permanently, especially in public places but also at home. These polymorphous distractions inevitably demand an answer to an inner reality dictated by peace as the only sustainable answer to chaos.
Weaponizing this contemporary necessity for centered presence, this music approaches, surrounds, and captivates the listener calmly, through celestial drones, lush chords, and austere melodies, inspiring an amniotic comfort but achieving its desired state of bliss without any specific discipline other than decidedly asserting an eternal now, an independent, self-sufficient timeline where the uninterrupted humming of indefinable pleasantness is all one needs to recuperate.
Even though the pristine production is highly detailed and the overall audio clarity is faultless, the specific tonalities of each sound remain tantalizingly out of reach, their blurred origin as elusive as the deliquescent aura of their sentiment.
The texture of the music is neither totally artificial nor entirely organic: while overall futuristic in its electronic nature it is also nostalgic in its prettiness, preoccupied as it is with harmony, adhering to symphonic chord structures and respecting the context of its reference frame as if abiding by the austere elegance of an invented academic protocol regarding the parameters of a musician's engagement with ambient music as a genre.
"Annual Flowers in Color” (released in 2016, and remastered in 2020) intensifies the playfulness and inventive aspect of John Elliott's music, introducing spoken word elements, field recordings, and other cinematic audio devices to lush synth-scapes.
This electronic aspect frames the genre context in the ambient sphere, its analog dreaminess and trance-inducing fluidity specifically alluding to the East Coast new age scene of the late '70s / early '80s.
Tranquil, expansive, undulating key notations revolve around modulated bass lines, their elegant spirals swirling over luxurious synth pads, the compositions advancing in a stately, unhurried manner, their sonic scope shifting slightly through barely perceptible chord changes and studio effects, successfully inducing a blissful state of mind.
Winning the listener over with emotional generosity that does not shy from sentimental gestures, the record ends, appropriately and dependably with a charming track that dazzles with its delicate embroidery of sonic curiosity featuring a glockenspiel-like toy melody
"So Extra Bronze Lamp”, released in 2020 is more reminiscent of a '90s post-rock collage of found sound detritus, accumulated and edited to resemble an ideal radio frequency tuned into interplanetary transmissions of uncanny beauty.
It opens with a station-hopping needle gliding across the radio dial until it settles briskly on a sun-dappled, paradisaical ambient sound. Gentle cymbals, aquatic splashes, vibrating xylophones, reversed strings, echoing gamelan ornamentation – every carefully curated sound proposes a state of deep relaxation and pensive daydreaming.
Again, the music-box softness of the sounds and the sheen created by the elaborate effects they have been treated with make the origin of each instrument indeterminate – either digitally created, sampled, produced or played on analog gear, their arrangement and processing make it very difficult to articulate any specifically artificial or natural provenance.
The same ambivalence is characteristic of the compositions, which could be improvisational but only in a very predetermined and austere manner, since the melodic lines and structures of each track never stray from defined acoustic principles and clear intentions.
A perfumed strand of playful exotica underscores the entire record, but again there are no specific ethnographic connotations, only an optimistic feeling of desirable otherness and curiosity about alternative ways of communing with the world.
“The Notional Pastures of Imaginary Softwoods” is Elliott's fourth and penultimate record, released in early 2023 (the latest being Enkō-ji Loop, a 10-minute single recorded live in Kyoto, Japan which appeared later in September of the same year).
Effervescent, playful, and teasing, the record opens with a chiming motif, its bright joyfulness punctuated and perhaps punctured by cartoon noises that are as subtle as they are comical, the entire dreamlike construct floating on delicate synth pads in a reverberating echo chamber.
It's an apt introduction to the vibrant electronica that follows: delicate ribbons of subtle metallic percussion, like echoing bells and softly-struck cymbals, their fluctuating tintinnabulation jingling over sustained chords in major keys while delayed choirs are stretched out under a thousand layers of transparent drones.
As the album progresses, the hypnagogic fog thickens, and the music becomes an abstraction of the sweet art of doing nothing, lulling the listener into an irresistible comfort zone that feels at once still, imposing, and calming.
Unexpected waves of shimmering glissando, interstellar locomotives, radio static, field recordings of exotic birds, and seashore evenings: so many glimmering audio details shoot like falling stars across the synthetic firmament pulsating with warm electronic signals.
“The Suncoast Digest” is an online exclusive 20-minute EP featuring two tracks. Starting in a contemporary classical direction, the warm, analog sound of the piano is at the forefront, relatively straightforward sounding, riffing on simple phrases, as if attempting to piece together memories of an Eric Satie nocturne.
The delicate sonic environment in which the hesitant notes reverberate is enlivened by aural décor that comes and goes in and out of focus, its nature without a definite pattern: soft electronic cascades, whispered synth pad backgrounds, barely perceptible choral hums, and the subtle crackle of a vinyl record create a delicate yet transportive vehicle for the dominant instrument.
Even as a solo artist, John Elliott proves to be a force majeure – perhaps his solitary palette is a tad more meditative, at least in comparison to his collaborations which seem to inspire purist exercises directly engaged with orthodox electronica, like kosmische '70s Krautrock, Eno, and Tangerine Dream. This propensity to look inward makes the music of Imaginary Softwoods a unique, personal experience of rare beauty.
Text written by Panagiotis Chatzistefanou, Berlin, February 2024