Grander Gestures - Loving Holding
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taken from the mini album “Old Growth”
TC02: Nostalgic Wavs 02; Yearning;
WLC011

Out 21st March 2025 on Woodland Creatures

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Hey this is Skwirl here to gab at you briefly about the records we have coming for this year’s thematic cluster! The theme is Nostalgic Wavs and each record has been linked to a concept under the rather large umbrella of nostalgia as a function of emotional attachment to memory.
Our second record for Nostalgic Wavs is Southern California based composer Coleman Goughary’s singer-songwriter debut as Grander Gestures. It is our “Yearning” record - as categorised on our Nostalgic Wavs map as Past, Reflective; Unknowing. (see below)

https://tr.ee/WLC_Nostalgic_Wavs-Graphic

Coming from last summer’s widely praised and well received Blessed In The Grand Scheme - an ambient symphony for chamber orchestra and electronics released on Mad Zach and yunis’ Antispace imprint, it’s with no small joy that we welcome his first foray into lyrical based songcraft to Woodland Creatures.

Each of Coleman’s five expansive pieces here are achingly tender and painfully raw echoes of one processing loss and the growth that inevitably emerges in its wake. The writing process spanned some of the most incredible moments of love found, love lost, hope manifested and hope dashed, discovery, inspiration, and soul crippling loss; and, these songs ring out in some instances as confident declarations of love and acceptance, and others as gasps for air and cries for solace and reconciliation.

Each evocation is beautifully underpinned by a staggering musicality and density that will be of little surprise to those lucky enough to experience Blessed In The Grand Scheme in all its lithe, earthily spiritual expressions of neo-classical composition. Farthest away from being a collection for the dancefloor this is narrative music for quiet moments, stillness, and emotional resonance.

It’s the kind of record that I as a teenager would have internalised deeply and been monumentally moved by - and that moment of lovingly reaching back across one’s life with new learnings and strengths to embrace the core of one’s roots and identity is the comfort that “Old Growth” seeks to cultivate. Despite being distinctly personal in perspective, much of Coleman’s record resonates outwardly with haunting accuracy.

As an effervescent denouement, Woodland Creature Tsodor (of last year’s stunning “Diffused Nocturne” LP) spins a web of silken sonic thread: weaving together grains of sound lifted carefully from the songs to guide the listener homeward with a conclusion that breathes and sways just long enough to become completely engrossing - only to end suddenly…leaving one yearning to restart, sit in silence and process, or simply to rest: delivered from this profound musical and emotional journey.
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visual sources:

Grander Gestures - Loving Holding (Official Visualiser)

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