Slow turns of tone and grain

LOG 082 – Found Near the North Wall

TPV Archive Entry: Seabuckthorn – Turns

We found this one where the wind comes through. Just behind the North Wall. Under a torn groundsheet and a crate of tapes marked 'UNSORTED'. The label had worn off. The track titles were just etchings. But once we threaded it through the old machine, it became obvious what we were listening to.

This is Turns by Seabuckthorn. It never asks for attention. It doesn’t try to convince you of anything. It’s not interested in trends, scenes, or followers. It just exists. Quietly. Steadily. Like moss growing through concrete.

A Record Without Edges

Andy Cartwright, the one behind Seabuckthorn, has been building sound structures out of hollow spaces for a while now. If you’ve heard his earlier work, you know the terrain: drones pulled from bowed guitars, distant percussive rattles, the creak of the natural world captured and stretched. But Turns feels even more eroded. Like something recorded from inside an abandoned water tower, or in the slow shadow of a retreating glacier.

The record doesn't play in songs so much as it moves in weather patterns. There's no drama, no hook. Just motion. Slow turns of tone and grain. It’s not ambient in the way that word gets thrown around now — this isn’t background music. It’s full presence. It demands stillness.

When it starts, it’s hard to tell where one piece ends and the next begins. That’s the point. Like mist, it blurs the lines. You’re not supposed to track it. You’re supposed to be inside it.

Standouts, If You Need Them

"The Good River" is the one we kept returning to. A low, bowed pulse beneath glistening textures, like light flickering on wet stone. It doesn’t build. It dissolves. Slowly. And then it’s gone.

Another: "Overgrown Courtyard." Guitar strings pulled like wires, warbling with tension. You hear something creaking in the background. Maybe a chair. Maybe a door swinging in wind. Maybe just your own bones.

These aren’t compositions. They're locations. And Cartwright doesn’t perform them so much as excavate them.

Why TPV Cares

There’s a lot of noise out there. Not in the good sense. Just sheer output. This album cuts through it by refusing to shout. It doesn’t chase attention. It rewards the patient. It’s the kind of work we listen to at the Outpost when the aerials stop picking things up, and all that’s left is the low internal hum.

Turns reminds us that not all music is made to be consumed. Some of it is made to haunt. To weather. To stay in the air long after it’s gone.

You won’t find it in algorithmic recommendations or chart placements. But it’s out there. Bandcamp. Independent vinyl stockists. Word of mouth. You’ll know it when it finds you.

Filed under: acoustic drone / elemental folk / soundtrack for nothing happening

Recommended use: dusk / distant thunder / walking until the streetlights come on

TPV recommends Turns by Seabuckthorn. Listen with nothing else open.