Gregory Darden got bit by the ambient bug early.
Listening to his brother’s copy of the classic Harold Budd-Brian Eno collaboration “Ambient 2: The Plateaux of Mirror” was a revelation. “This is so beautiful,” the Richmond-based artist and part-time Deep Groove Records employee recalls thinking. “I don’t know what to do with it, but I’m going to keep listening to it.”
“I felt very adult, doing that in my early teens,” he adds. “Then my brother, whose record it was, was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s my hangover record.’”
It was an immediate lesson in the utility of ambient music. From Eno’s essential works to the Kranky label’s turn-of-the-century output to the renewed appreciation that cropped up in response to the stressors of COVID-19, the genre’s instrumental arrangements and real-life applications are as ranging as the wide-open sonic landscapes and deep-thinking mind-states it’s known for opening. Darden’s new album, “Forgotten Gardens,” illustrates how ambient’s usefulness extends to the process of creation — and to simply moving through the world.
“Forgotten Gardens” was released in May via Darden’s own Royal Beagle imprint. Its seven instrumental compositions are thoughtfully layered and benevolently haunting, working together to cast a spell under which it’s easy to imagine yourself as part of a narrative — a movie your imagination makes in real time. Darden’s own personal history played a role as he was recording: “With this last set of songs, I found that things from my past, family stuff, et cetera, emotions I was going through … I found that those feelings were present.”
The drone to discovery
Darden’s process often starts with slowly evolving drone sounds from a bellows-controlled instrument like the harmonium or shruti box. He likens that sonic foundation to “the carpet that I’m going to dance on” by adding other elements later on — anything from processed guitar sounds to samples and nature sounds. That first stage is meditative work. “I equate it to being out on the dance floor with the bass pounding hard and you get lost and you forget everything,” Darden says. “When you’re droning for over 10 minutes on the same thing, you get lost in it.”
Submerged thoughts bubble up when our consciousness is at its quietest, and “Forgotten Gardens” was a turning point in that respect. “I’ve always thought that it was an escape, like ‘I’m escaping by getting lost in this sound…’ It was a really strange experience, because it wasn’t just an escape. It became something else … I don’t know if they were ghosts, but they were with me the whole time.”
Other things surfaced as Darden was droning. While creating the penultimate “Forgotten Gardens” track, “Through Tunnel Islands,” Darden’s mind drifted toward travel and he decided to overlay field recordings of trains that complemented — even blended with — the drone he was inspired by. “Maybe someone else would do yoga with that,” he says, “and here I am [asking] ‘What can I put on top of that?’”
That act of listening deeply and layering responsively is familiar to those who have known Darden on his path into and around Richmond’s music community. Darden traveled the world growing up as a self-described “Army brat” — the youngest of six. Art, books and music were always around, but his family members weren’t especially musical. “I had the dad who, on the occasion we did go to church, when he sang it was absolutely horrible,” he jokes. “So that was not part of my DNA. I always felt on the edge of that, but admiring.”
He moved to Richmond in 1986, in part because of admiration of the music he found here and the people who made it. “That’s why I moved here, ultimately, from going to a couple of shows, and [thinking], ‘OK, this place, one, will have me, and two, there’s a lot of cool people here.’”
In the years since, his friend groups and former roommates have included members of some of the most revered groups in Richmond indie history, including Honor Role, Breadwinner and Kranky signees Labradford, as well as the exploratory drone outfit Pelt. He worked at Plan 9 in the 1990s and was even credited with sequencing the tracks on Breadwinner’s 1994 “Burner” compilation — a distinction he chalks up to his personal connection with the Merge Records-signed math rock progenitors: “I think they just wanted to give me thanks for something, because they practiced in my house, and I went to see them all the time.”
Assembly inspired
He remained the “help-move-equipment guy,” as he puts it, until 2001, when he started manipulating sounds on a four-track recorder. Some of that early experimentation took place alongside Bobby Donne of Labradford in a group called Cristal, which released a string of texturally rich albums and singles throughout the 2000s. Upon familiarizing himself with the harmonium, he found a vital creative access point. “Wow, I don’t even have to be a musician and I’m actually finding so many things within this that I like,” he remembers thinking. “‘I’m able to express so much from just this one set of notes, or this air.’ It was wonderful. I just kept at it.”
Despite a growing discography, Darden still positions himself between the worlds of curation and creation. “If I have a forte, not being a musician, it’s in assembling things,” he says. He’s released collaborative albums alongside fellow Richmonder Christian Brady as Fyt, and with fellow Deep Groove wax slinger Cloud M, who praises Darden’s easy demeanor and keen ability to reframe sonic elements. “Greg is very good at making you second-guess the sound that you’re hearing,” Cloud says. “He has a very organic way of presenting sounds in a way where you don’t really know where they’re originally coming from.”
Darden’s most recent effort incorporates the playing of classically trained violinist Chris Johnston (“Raining Beauty” and “Guilts”) and percussion from Hunter Duke of West Lab Studios (“Necropolis”). “I take these fragments and then try to assemble something into a working composition, or something beautiful, is really what I’m shooting for.”
To Cloud’s ear, which has helped make Deep Groove a destination for vinyl enthusiasts with adventurous tastes, Darden achieved the beatific alchemy that makes ambient so curative. “Of course a lot of hard work was put into that record,” Cloud says, “but I think you’re able to, when ‘Forgotten Gardens’ is playing, forget about the world around you and absorb into the now.”
Musical gateways
Darden’s artistry comes into clearest focus when you consider its range. He mixed and mastered “Forgotten Gardens” himself, and the album art — eerily mirroring the depth of field you find in the music itself — is his as well. He’s especially inspired by forms of intersecting media. A shorter 2020 collection titled “The Soils,” whose cover art is a painting of Darden’s, includes bits of sound from the 1995 Milcho Manchevski film “Before the Rain.” Sometimes he’ll project old 16-millimeter film on the wall and fit it with a new soundtrack — either records from his extensive collection or his own compositions — to see where stacking texts may lead.
During the pandemic, he turned his knack for assembling toward music that was being made by friends and artists he admired. In spring of 2022, Royal Beagle released a cassette compilation entitled “Exposit,” which brought together mostly instrumental music in the ambient, noise and post-rock veins as a way of amplifying the reach of kindred experimentalists. “There’s a finite audience for mostly instrumental music,” he notes, “so your expectations are: ‘Can I put something together that works?’ And I did, and then it’s out there for the people who are interested. And with something like Bandcamp, you can find the other two people that are in Portland or South Carolina.”
“You just gotta keep trying,” he concludes. “That’s what I have the energy for, even though maybe that’s part of the struggle — just to keep at it and stay positive.”
Darden commissioned a small run of cassettes for “Forgotten Gardens,” and some of those were made available at Deep Groove. If you stop by during one of Darden’s shifts, you’ll find him surrounded by albums, traveling yet another two-way musical street. “There are so many gateways to other worlds, when you’re talking about music, and sharing music,” he says. “It’s not one-sided. People hip us to stuff [at Deep Groove] all the time, and we’re like, ‘What? Oh yeah! Cool!’ It’s really exciting … I never want to not be open to new things.”
Listening and reacting, droning and collaborating, compiling and sharing — all contributing, all conversing, all in a state of constant change. “There’s a give-and-take with rock music that I love,” Darden notes. “And with jazz, there’s a give-take-take, give-give-give, take-take-take. With ambient music, it’s like, ‘What is happening here, and how do we relate with each other and maneuver through the day?’”
To hear and purchase “Forgotten Gardens,” visit gregorydarden.bandcamp.com.
