Seabuckthorn – Turns

Andy Cartwright, the musician behind Seabuckthorn, has been building his own corner of the experimental landscape for more than a decade. His work has always been centred on the guitar, but never in a conventional sense. For Cartwright the instrument is less about riffs or hooks and more about exploring the spaces between sound and silence, tone and resonance. With Turns he goes deeper into that territory, creating a record that is as much about atmosphere as it is about composition.

From the opening moments it is clear this is not music chasing immediacy. Turns builds slowly, each piece unfolding with patience. Repeated guitar figures cycle and change, not in a show of technique but in a way that lets texture take the lead. It is music that asks the listener to lean in, to notice the small shifts in tone, the layers that gradually form into something larger than the sum of their parts.

There is a strong sense of geography in these tracks. They suggest wide open spaces, sparse environments, a kind of sonic landscape that feels both stark and deeply human. At times it recalls Ry Cooder’s Paris Texas in the way it captures solitude, though Cartwright’s approach is more ambiguous, less tied to story. Elsewhere there are hints of Earth’s long drawn meditations, but softened and made more reflective.

What makes Turns engaging is its refusal to overstate itself. These are not songs that fight for attention. They breathe. They sit in the room differently, filling it with something that feels both timeless and contemporary. The record moves close to drone in some passages and closer to folk in others, but never long enough to be pinned down. That refusal to settle has always been a mark of Cartwright’s work, and here it feels more defined than ever.

The recording choices are just as important. There is warmth in the sound but also a deliberate sparseness, as if each note has been given exactly the space it needs to resonate before falling away. That balance makes the record feel intimate even when it reaches towards something vast. On headphones you catch small details — the crack of a string, the air around a chord — while through speakers the music stretches out, making its patience all the more striking.

Seabuckthorn has never aimed for the mainstream, and Turns is not built for that. It is a record that reveals more with each listen and one that stays with you long after it ends. For those who value depth over surface, it shows Cartwright continuing to carve his own path with quiet confidence.