Sun Swept

I’m still catching up from the end of 2024 and this one’s been on the list for some time now. The work of Sarah Christensen, Sun Swept captures the sweeping vistas and dense natural surroundings of her Colorado home. Hooked into the rungs of ambient and New Age, Christiansen builds panoramas of flute and synth that cocoon the listener in crystalline auras set adrift on Autumnal winds. The anchor here is Sarah’s flute work, both spectral and ceremonial, haunting phrases that encircle the listener in memory and meditation. Beyond the flute, Sun Swept bolsters the pieces on Germinations with gauzy synths, wind-kissed bells, and analog decay. The latter comes to play a welcome part in the process, a blue flame just out of frame that threatens to consume the beauty that Sun Swept creates.
New Age, despite its recent resurgence, still remains a word used to mar a record, a four-letter word that’s more dismissive than descriptive. Germinations is, at its heart a New Age release, parked parallel with the re-investment in Laraaji, the rising stable at Leaving Records, and the legacy of Pauline Anna Strom. It digs deeper though, trickling into the roots of Herbie Mann, International Anthem’s outre limits, and the psychedelic edges of folk. It’s hard to pin Germinations down, always slipping through the cracks of the consciousness. All associations aside, the record is also just a beautiful moment of bliss, a re-centering that’s gravely needed in the face of the friction of modern times. It’s forty minutes to get you through the next fourteen hours.
Support the artist. Buy it HERE.