Portland, Oregon-based artist James Cooke, aka Graintable, is something of a Ran$om Note stalwart, having released 3 albums with the label since 2019. His new 10-track collection, titled Blue Flax, is the latest edition to their Music To Watch Seeds Grow By series of cassettes. 

While made in homage / tribute to nature and the organic, the music is wholly electronic, focused around racing river-like frequencies and soft synthetic drones. The latter are stretched, strange, alien tones. Swapping for reeds, strings and woodwinds. Sometimes whistle thin. Netsuke From The Garden is built on cello-like sounds. The piece, part Eno’s Sparrowfall and part PiL’s Radio 4, summoning a quiet, nocturnal melancholy. The mood is much lighter on something like Swift Creek. Describing the dawn not the dark, and offering a safe sonic oasis, it sends slow, echoed sweeps and sighs, delayed waves, out into time’s expanse / infinity. On Alvord Sunset, ping ponging bleeps fall in a pitter pattern like rain. Otters On The Lake features splashes from a field recorded shoreline. 

Cerulean Fields is considered to the be the set’s centrepiece. A blend of big, echoed keys and a fresh, flowing stream of bubbling, rippling sequences, it’s like a meeting of Pat Metheny, Steve Reich and Manuel Gottsching. Ambient techno that rises like rapids pulled toward some irresistible force. 

Graintable’s Blue Flax: Music to Watch Seeds Grow By 003 can be ordered directly from Ran$om Note. The series is fast becoming super collectable.