‘Melt’ is a single long-form track of warm, overlapping tones created with a toy keyboard, a synthesizer, analogue delay and looper pedals, and some minimal laptop processing. Glitches and signal problems were welcomed into the process, shrouding the fragmented yet lyrical keyboard melodies in a gentle mist of fuzz, clicks and hiss.

Released on 3" CDR on Rural Colours as part of subscription pack 11 (sold out).

Also available digitally from bandcamp (name your price).

Released 15 May 2011
Written and produced by Wil Bolton
Photography and design by Jonathan Lees

Rural Colours RC035
www.ruralcolours.co.uk

Reviews

"Bolton's Melt is more in keeping with the style presented on his recent Time Palse (Hibernate, 2010) than the beat-driven IDM-electronica he's issued as Cheju for his own Boltfish Recordings label. The Liverpool, UK-based producer opts in Melt's case for a single-track setting of micro-detailed scene painting. Bolton weaves constantly mutating slivers of digitally processed sound—pops, clicks, flickers, and fragments of unidentifiable origin (though some of its bright tones sound rather Rhodes-like)—into a multi-layered array that ebbs and flows at a peaceful and steady pace for twenty-one minutes. Bolton's been working with field recordings of late, so it's possible that some of the source material is environmental in origin, though it's impossible to tell when the resultant sounds are so electronic in nature. The piece brings to mind the effect of scattered sunlight reflecting off of a pond's surface on summer's day or, more appropriately in this case, light reflecting off of a bright snowy surface as the sun slowly melts it away." - Textura

"Wil Bolton is a british composer who caught my attention with his superb debut Time Lapse released on Hibernate in 2010. I remember quite clearly how beautiful and delicate his music sounded the first time I heard it. It was ambient music as defined by Brian Eno, “An ambience is defined as an atmosphere, or a surrounding influence: a tint [...] Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting.”

Time Lapse had this sonic perfume quality that I very much liked on albums such as On Land or The Pearl, and it was both powerful and subdued, demanding focus and attention to fully appreciate its beauty.

For the last year or so, Bolton has been busy with two new wonderful projects, Chimes for a Wall Drawing released on Cathedral Transmissions and Melt released on Rural Colours. Being very different in scope and ambition, Chimes for a Wall Drawing is an hour-long live album and Melt is a 20-min studio EP, both records are undoubtedly very ‘Bolton’ in atmosphere and delicacy.

If Chimes for a Wall Drawing was very much open and wide in scope, Melt feels much more focused and intimate. Again fragments of melodies appear and repeat throughout this long-form piece, seemingly going nowhere but moving and changing in incremental fashion. Glitches, crackles and occasional saturation of tones blur the picture at times, and give the music a texture that reminds of a badly kept super-8 movie. Colours change subtly, objects appear in and out of focus and time seems inconsistent, either slowing down or speeding up. It is hard to tell what’s being shown but does it matters? Bolton creates irradiating miniatures that warms the listener up by their imperfections. Again, there is light but this time it seems trapped inside an iridescent glass ball whose surface is meticulously observed by the listener. Delicate light rays seems to bounce back and forth on its surface, like floating in slow motion in a white sonic aether. Melt feels like softness has been attached to a shell and for this reason is a pure delight." - Static Sound