There Will Come Gentle Rain

Black vinyl, pressed in Slovakia, offset-printed full-colour sleeve.

Stas Shärifullá aka HMOT makes a welcome return to Warm Winters Ltd. with a multi-layered album titled ‘There Will Come Gentle Rain’. The album tells tales of a life split between cultures, of Bashqort legends, of finding strength in darkness, of betrayal, demons and of aspiring to become invisible. Its 7 tracks are centred around HMOT’s experimental electronics, quray recordings, processed field recordings and samples, and is enriched by guest appearances from Eldar Tagi (daxophone & shtar), Adela Mede (voice), Sainkho Namtchylak (voice) and Rupert Clervaux (percussion).

‘There Will Come Gentle Rain’ – which references a short story by Ray Bradbury and its animated film version directed by Nazim Tulyakhodzayev in 1987 – is fiery, desperate, it reflects the tumultuous state of the world, but it’s simultaneously grounded, deliberate and vigorous. Drawing on ongoing academic research into how sonic traditions preserve collective memory and inspire political imagination, HMOT consciously brings to its fore elements of sound, language and knowledge which are increasingly suppressed and marginalised in contemporary discourse. Folktales are retold through complex algorithms and resynthesis (“Sharp Razor, Hazel Flower Under My Skin, You Can’t See Me Anymore”), synthesis itself is employed as a metaphor for experiencing one’s own culture from a distance (“Yağımlı Yamğır Yaw​ı​r”), field recordings of children playing instruments in a pre-school in Switzerland are reframed through the lens of fire, resulting in a meditation on migration and sense of belonging (“Yand​ı​m”).

The guests also expand on these ideas – Kazakhstan-born Berlin-based musician Eldar Tagi’s daxophone on “Albastı” as if awaking a demon from its slumber; Slovak-Hungarian artist Adela Mede’s lyrics drawing parallels between Hungarian and Turkic languages on “Qom”, which itself explores uncertainty through tales of a “sand that will betray you”; Tuvan vocalist Sainkho Namtchylak’s indomitable seven-octave vocalisations narrating the moment we are living, in flames with the wrong kind of fire.

Ambitious in its breadth of both ideas and sounds, the cover of ‘There Will Come Gentle Rain’ acts almost a portrait of the artist. Titled ‘Happy Wanderer’, it depicts a vagrant life, an existence at the edge of the world, but one that still alludes to – or at least hopes for – a better future, despite nothing or nobody indicating that that’s where we’re heading. Let’s hope that HMOT is right, that ‘There Will Come Gentle Rain’.