Music To Watch Seeds Grow By (Interview)
Today we’re listening to Music To Watch Seeds Grow By, a series of ambient records put out by the label Ransom Note. The project was conceived by Tia Cousins and Wil Troup as “an ambient/new-age/planty cassette sub-label.” It’s inspired by the peace and pace of plant growth. They’ve so far commissioned six records, which are all available on the project’s Bandcamp page. We’re playing two installments. The first one is by Graintable of Portland, Oregon, whose minimal compositions consist of synth pads, arpeggios, and sweeps. The next one is by the English duo Woo, brothers Mark and Clive Ives, whose whimsical, lofi concoctions we previously recommended in 2022. A conversation with Tia and Wil follows the streaming links.
Music To Watch Seeds Grow By 003: Graintable (Blue Flax) - Graintable (46m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal
Music To Watch Seeds Grow By 001: Woo (Sweet Peas) - Woo (32m, vocals on track 5)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal
Tell us about your backgrounds. Where’d you grow up and how did you pair up at Ransom Note?
Tia Cousins: I grew up in Essex & moved to London when I was 19 for uni. Before I moved to London I used to do gig photography and dip my toes into reviews because I loved going out to see live music (even more so for free). I studied Music Business at university & did various odd jobs in events, artist management, etc. My first full time job in music was radio plugging for a PR company! Through that I actually managed to crash a few Ransom Note Christmas parties, so I knew the crew briefly. I think in November 2023 or so Wil asked if I wanted to A&R for the label because he thought I had wonderful ears, and here we are…
Wil Troup: I was born in London but grew up in the West Country in a slightly dead-end town after a brief stint in California. My parents were massive hippies, used to have a stall selling tie-dyed, airbrushed psychedelic cow t-shirts at Glastonbury since I was born – I think they also flogged rainbow laces and the like too – so I was always around music from an early age. I used to be allowed to wander around the site on my own bare feet, those were the days n all that!
It was only when I went to my first Glastonbury alone in 1993 – where I saw The Orb, Spiritualized, and Ozric Tentacles – that I finally "got it." It was probably too much acid at an early age, but from then on, I knew I always wanted to be involved in some way. When I finally started working in the industry in my 20s at a PR company called ZZonked, I soon realised how insipid the whole thing was, so I stepped away for a bit and got into computers. When I returned, I got involved more on the other side of things, and that's where Ransom Note emerged from. We started the label as a bit of an accident off the back of that, really, but it's morphed into various sub-labels. I'm good at starting fires, but sometimes not so good at keeping the logs on the fire, and I had kind of hit a wall with the A&R on the label after seven years. When I saw Tia play back-to-back with Optimo on a boat in Croatia, I was blown away. Someone who can hold their own with those two has to have pretty special ears. Given we're both pretty shy people, I think I sent her an email via a friend asking if she'd be up for doing some A&R with R$N. She was, thank God! The label feels like it has had a whole new lease of life...
We've noticed an uptick in interest in ambient music and instrumental music that's inspired by nature, specifically in the last 10 years or so. Have you noticed the same?
TC: I can’t speak for the past 10 years as someone who’s only taken a real interest in ambient music in the past 5 years or so. I think it’s something I've grown to need as I've gotten older and life has gotten more stressful. Especially now when the world seems so turbulent, it feels like there’s been a real uptake in people taking an interest in wellness – music works hand in hand with these practices. I guess that the real goal is to feel grounded in a world that feels like it’s moving too fast; nature brings us back to that.
WT: Ambient music is timeless, unless it’s some new age waffle which sounds very dated very quickly. Ever since I heard Music For Airports during a difficult time in my life I knew I’d always need it in my life. I’ve started running to it of late too. Actually keeps me more grounded, rather than putting on something pounding which means I run out of steam pretty quickly. Agree tho, the world is going way too quickly atm and this definitely helps as a coping mechanism for it!
Tell us about the motivations behind Music To Watch Seeds Grow By: what was the particular inspiration that led to the idea for the series?
TC: I got into gardening last year (by accident, I guess) – during a sober stint, a lot of people brought me seeds for my birthday, so I sowed them. Me & Wil were showing each other pics of our seedlings and music we’d been digging, which mostly happened to be ambient stuff. I looked back to when we were first talking about it and within 2 hours of the idea of an ambient label being mentioned, we’d made a Bandcamp page & started planning - myself & Wil get very overexcited once we’ve had a coffee.
I can’t quite remember how we paired up the seeds with the music, but the intention is that each artist chooses a plant, which inspires the music, that can be sown in the release month.
WT: I think the seeds idea was another one of my slightly naive, unthought-out ones, Tia. I’m not claiming it as my own, merely accepting fault for making your life more difficult during the postage process. But yeah I think it was after a few months of working together we realised we were both mega into plants and playing them ambient music whilst tending to them first thing in the garden..… so Music To Watch Seeds Grow By was born to combine both. It was only just as we were launching the label that I realised I’d ripped off my friend of many years and Bytes Label cohort Joe Clay and his wife Ali’s feature that they were doing for the site years ago:
https://www.theransomnote.com/music/news/music-for-plants-1/
Anyway, as Joe says, “There are no original ideas.” As I said, I’m good at starting fires. I think Tia’s kind of realised though she has to keep this one going hah!
How did you arrive at the artists who are contributing to the series?
TC: The first artist who came to mind was Davis Galvin, who had recently done a remix of Wave Arising for us. It was a beautiful 14-minute ambient piece and we were thinking how amazing it would be for them to explore a full album of a similar sonic. Woo & E Ruscha V are all-time faves of both of us, we reached out to them not really expecting anything to come from it, but both were super keen! Lily is our wonderful label assistant who is ever so talented & Stella is a local hero in London!
WT: I’d always tried to define the main label as Acid, Wonky Pop, and Ambient oddities and we’d already released the ethereal Graintable before on the label. He was bang into the Seeds idea of producing music to go with a particular plant, so he jumped on board the Seed ship. Then the CRAZILY TALENTED Daniel Herrmann aka Flug 8, who we released on the label too, was into the idea of creating these illustrations for the label. If you line all six releases we’ve put out this season, they look so beautiful next to each other too.
What's next for the label and for Seeds?
WT: I think after my stupidity of saying, “Yeah, we should do a release for every month of the growing season,” Tia’s had enough of ENDLESSLY POSTING CASSETTES, so we’re gonna take a breather for the summer to watch our seeds grow and give the garden a bit of love. We’ve also realised that because there’s a whole world out there, the growing season happens all year round, also because you can overwinter many plants too. So watch this space for the next release in the autumn.
We’re also doing a little ambient takeover at Watching Trees – the festival we run with Optimo and many other beautiful friends – this year, where we’ll have our own little glade for seed-like explorations amongst the green canopy on the Saturday. A friend is building us a beautiful hide, out of the woodland and another friend is doing some beautiful light installations for it all. See you in the wee hours for times of contemplation.
