RUSSELL BURDEN & CRAIG TATTERSALL – DIAGENESIS 
The Laaps release for Spring (it was released on 24-04-2023) is a collaboration album by Russell Burden and Craig Tattersall (also known as The Humble Bee). Both are sound and visual artists with a special dedication to the environment.
Burden specifically explores ‘qualities of ambient perception, most often through the lens of hydrological, geological or biological processes’, while Tattersall focuses on his own interactions within his environment.
This is especially clear on this album, where the soundscapes are built from many different field recordings to create a detailed fantasy landscape. But the result is not simply a collection of documentary environmental recordings, but four undoubtly musical soundscapes.
Diagenesis,the (well-chosen) album title, means ‘the watery interactions, microbial activities, alterations, compactions, and chemical transformations of sediments slowly converting to rock’.
NED MILLIGAN – CONSIDERABLE
Next in line in the continuing Laaps series (but still representing the Spring season, slowly nearing Summer) is Ned Milligan‘s Considerable.
New York-based Ned Milligan’s daytime job is an elementary school teacher, but apart from that he is an ‘occasional’ musician.
For this occasion, he created a beautiful companion to the aforementioned Burden/Tattersall album, completing the field recordings with chimes, singing drum, autoharp, and – of course – extensive processing.
‘My work in the past five years has been grounded in recording and playing outdoors, trying to communicate the meaning of being in a particular location and finding meaning in interacting with whatever sounds or elements are equally present’.
Personally, I would have skipped the ‘graciously and anonymously donated singing’ in the beginning of A Crack In The Sky, because for me it somewhat breaks the spell of a fresh and sparkling outdoor holiday vacation that the rest of the album radiates. A vacation in York, Maine, obviously, because that is where most of the sounds were recorded.