Originally released as a limited-run cassette, this collection of synth pieces from the former Emeralds member is a staggeringly beautiful career highlight.
The cult-favorite trio Emeralds—comprised of John Elliott, Steve Hauschildt, and Mark McGuire—spent the late 2000s fusing drone, New Age and kosmiche better than any band of their time. Despite putting out more than 40 projects before disbanding in 2012, Emeralds left behind a lingering sense of unrealized possibilities—strands of which its members have been exploring in their solo careers. Though Elliott continued with projects like Mist and Outer Space, his focus has increasingly shifted to running his label Spectrum Spools, an off-shoot of Editions Mego that trades in the cutting-edge club sounds of Container and Second Woman and experimental gems like Donato Dozzy Plays Bee Mask and Motion Sickness of Time Travel.
If Elliott’s own solo output slowed, the success of his label always felt like an understandable trade-off — but there may be another reason. Annual Flowers In Color is the album he has been writing, editing, living with and returning to since the final days of Emeralds. The album is credited to Imaginary Softwoods, a moniker that stretches back to 2008 and often explores the side of Elliott’s synth work that might have been crushed under the weight of Emeralds’ drones. The album originally surfaced in 2016 as a small-run cassette collecting unreleased material, but he kept pruning the recordings over the years. Now released in finished form nearly a decade after its earliest recordings, Annual Flowers emerges from its chrysalis a wounded, staggeringly beautiful statement that feels like a new high point in his career.
This new edition is expanded by a lush remastering for vinyl, but it’s just as noteworthy for what’s removed—nearly a third of the original album. He trims some tracks to brief interludes and omits others altogether, but each decision enhances the original’s cathartic power. “Cloud Damage” opens with Angelo Badalamenti-style organ that swells before being swallowed up in a hard-cut instant by the chiming, chromatic synth loop of “Positive Ruin Court Garden.” The effect is jarring, but not unpleasant, like being awakened from a nightmare by birdsong.
The pieces set the stage for “Aura Show,” the first of two epics, where Elliott generates synth waves so soothing that the pensive melody of its second half feels like a spontaneous discovery every time. It compliments “Another First/Sea Machine,” which builds hypnotic ripples of arpeggios over a nearly 11-minute arc that peaks with the kind of endorphin-pumping rush that defined Does It Look Like I’m Here’s best moments. What sticks out most is Elliott’s care in framing his tracks with the subtlest elements: the quiet rattle of what sounds like a stalling motor, a spoken-word snippet by Japanese artist Yuri, or the gentle room-shaking rumble of a passing train running through heartbreaking closer “The Imminent Collapse Department,” a haunting fusion of music-box melodies and crumbling sound design that recalls Broadcast’s final work with The Focus Group.
Even the tracks cut from Annual Flowers (all of which are remastered and included as digital bonus tracks) are quite good, which only makes Elliott’s editing job more difficult. “Positive Ruin” and “Aura Show,” tracks that flow perfectly together, were originally separated by the lively “Multiple Discovery” and “Calendula,” but their absence ultimately strengths and focuses everything around it. Elsewhere, the mournful synth flickering through “The Geranium Room” is cut down to a minute-long interlude, a crucial choice that reframes it as the heart of the album. It all creates a gravity-shifting power that makes the album sound like it couldn’t have been constructed any other way. What may have begun as demos and sketches in 2011, and an overlooked highlight in 2016, has aged to perfection in 2020.
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