Isle Enchanted

 A really long, wonderful summer, despite many personal lows this year, was followed by a very nice autumn with temperatures sometimes reaching up to 20 degrees. 

They are days that I would like to spend just in nature, with my face turned to the sun, with big eyes for the colors of the leaves on the trees and always with a little melancholy in my heart. In the reality of everyday life, this often comes to nothing and hours in the forest turn into minutes on the streets between things to do.

A favorite companion on my walks in nature is Fantasy island ethnographer Wave Temples. For over 10 years, my heart beats faster whenever a new release is announced.

2022/2023 was a fantastic Wave Temples year, “Panama Shift” was the first release on vinyl, and there were also a few cassette releases on Possible Motive, among others (later in this program). Before that, things had been quiet around Wave Temples for a long time, partly due to some turbulence in his life.

See also the Interview with Inverted Audio:

 

https://inverted-audio.com/mix/wave-temples/

“Isle Enchanted” was released on Britt Brown’s great Not Not Fun label at the end of 2016.

My brother had just passed away a month before & we were out of ours at the end of the year 

Apartment canceled due to personal use. So it will always be the soundtrack of those days. Someone (presumably Britt Brown himself) decided to put "Masterpiece" on the cover. For me it is, but it could also be on most other Wave Temples releases. The album was released on December 16, 2016 and one of my last actions with the old WiFi was to download this album (the tape only came to me later). The next day we put down new roots in a new place.

The album has some wonderful reviews and descriptions that I couldn't describe any better and, as usual, I'm happy to let them speak for themselves.

„The Florida musician who records as Wave Temples—whoever they are—has chosen an apt name for their project. The first thing you hear on Isle Enchanted is the sound of foaming waves, closely followed by a keyboard line that mimics the sound of a tropical pan flute. Enchanted follows a string of similarly coastal LPs—Sleeping Tortugas, In the Shade of the Island—and its primary concern is not having any primary concerns. The two 15-minute compositions that make up the album drift by dreamlike, consisting of little more than ocean sounds and synths that ripple like the aurora borealis. Where his labelmates on the LA-based Not Not Fun bend and distend synths to create distinctly unsettling worlds, Wave Temples is more serene than surreal.

But what makes Isle Enchanted so engrossing is the way Wave Temples uses repeated patterns to hypnotizing effect. Nine minutes into “Part I,” the landscape suddenly shifts from a simple, two-note lullabye to what sounds like digital windchimes caught in a strong breeze. The tight cluster of notes repeats over and over, ocean roaring behind them, neither gaining nor losing strength. The net effect is weirdly calming, the twinkling keyboards becoming as regular and expected as the next heartbeat. “Part II” is even more translucent; the ocean keeps going, but the synth lines sound like they’re being played in a grotto far below. There are no sharp edges to the sounds on Enchanted; everything is low and flutelike. The album ends with a simple, five-note melody plunked out on what sounds like a computerized kettle drum, the space between each note big enough to contain a whole other song. Isle Enchanted doesn’t command attention or dazzle with complexity. It simply invites you to disappear inside of it for a while.“

J. Edward Keyes - Bandcamp/Album of the Day/04.01.17

„Floridian fantasy island ethnographer Wave Temples is responsible for a unique flow of opaque tropical hallucinations since 2013, issued via a variety of noted tape boutiques. His latest, Isle Enchanted, maps a mirage coastline of salt haze, cerulean water, and smeared, siren keys. Both sides were tracked across three summer days, inspired by notions of Polynesian paradise and the Māori underworld. Blank blue waves swell and ebb, tones float and fade, textures phase and decay – Isolation Exotica, for castaways abandoned on utopian shores. As personal and poetic an encapsulation of palm tree minimalism as any we’ve heard since …On Sea-Faring Isolation (2009). The more hidden the temple the more sacred the space: “This place to me is what it must have been like to discover the island of Capri or Malta uninhabited since beyond ancient days.” 

Recorded live at Hawaiki, June 20-22, 2016. 

Images sourced by WT. 

Design by Britt Brown.  

Mastered by Alter Echo.

ABANDONED PARADISE

OCEAN AT LOW TIDE

CAVES OF THE GROTTO AQUATICA

SAND LAIN BARE, SHIMMERING NAKED IN THE SUN PAST THE WATCHFUL GUARDIANS

DEEP INSIDE WITH POOLS OF RADIANCE

THIS IS WHERE THE SLEEPING GIANT SLEEPS AND HIS ONE-THOUSAND DREAMS

OF LAPIS SCIMMIA AT THE IVORY RUIN

BENEATH THE SACRED CENOTE AND THE LOST SHRINE OF THE MANY SHELLED TRITONS IN THE SACRED WATER GARDEN OF PRIAPUS AND APHRODITE

A WIND QUIXOTIC