I have curated four compilations for ambient musician Wodwo: Analect, Florilegium, Garland and Corpus. This has been a new and delightful experience, and I was honoured to be able to contribute to the catalogue of a talented artist who I have listened to religiously. Read my full response to the sequences and to the artist’s work below.
At first glance, to create a new sequence with songs that were not originally in unison goes against an abstract natural order, but here, through these four compilations, this rule has been manipulated. A discography scaling four years has been explored, measured and filtered. Several of the finest musical pieces by Wodwo have been gathered and carefully arranged in order to create a new listening experience that maintains the artist’s pinnacle from start to finish.
At times, these four sequences co-operate in a way that resembles prior-made albums rather than fresh compilations, yet it is rare that any of them feature more than one track from the same record, but as the entries stem from the same mind there is a relationship between all of them. This quartet of sequences are a refinement of those relationships. Analect, Florilegium, Garland and Corpus are musical spaces that we can make memories in. The songs they hold have the ability to create the kind of blissful moments that are enjoyed more with hindsight; through this work, we can acutely experience the ability sound has to inspire emotions, and with what may be the only art form that hits two-fold (physically, in its vibration of space, and emotionally), music, Wodwo is able to take us back to atavistic experiences and on the same hand raise our own feelings and either disturb, satisfy or remind us. The chosen tracks here have the potential to freeze you in time by returning you to an exact moment or by creating a new one entirely. This grants the sequences an edge of futurism, which can be easily determined by listening to the likes of Analect and Corpus, but it is not only due to Wodwo’s ambient, neo-classical style but also how his songs are tools that can take us back and forth through time.
Wodwo’s discography is already vast, and it will continue to grow, but by listening to Analect, Florilegium, Garland and Corpus, you will have heard one curator’s presentation of the sweetest outings taken from the musician’s library. You can be confident that — if it is your first time hearing the artist — you are being met with his best work or — if you are already familiar — you will hear several songs anew, and, hopefully, better appreciate their excellence because of the stronger presence they now hold with their new positions.
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