Muhmur Radio & Soundart Radio presents,
Saturday Mar 21st 2026 @ Soundart Radio, Room 1, Higher Close, Dartington Hall, TQ96EP
Water is the Sun is the inevitable union of Mkl Anderson (Drekka), and Adam Parks (Timber Rattle / Lightning White Bison). Together they play an alchemical amalgam of their primary projects, resulting in cinematic / landscape textures that give slow birth to psyche-pastorals and intoned ritual songs; a music as informed by the devotional chants of West Coast cults and Appalachian hymns as it is by the dark new age and ambient resonance of the experimental scene that has embraced and supported both musicians for many years.
"Ritual Fever" - with its dual reference to an ecstatic state connected with nature, and an anxious lack in the context of modern-day alienation - is Water Is The Sun's first co-written / co-produced recording. It is a sculpted studio document of a fully realized work which they present in its entirety during their live performance.
In both environments, the duo willfully inhabits the liminal region between the colorful, diverse palette and improvisational possibilities of abstract sound, and more concrete universal song structures. A foundation of becoming embraces the radical aspects of experimental means and aesthetics - even hearkening to a timeless primordial - culminating intermittently in the being of meditative folk-inspired compositions; intentional and accessible gestures that strive for an authentic shared feeling in the context of a world where social energy, information, sound and meaning are increasingly dissipate.
The album is recorded - as the live set is performed - with old tape machines, keyboards and field-/found-recordings; materials and instruments with capabilities and limitations which keep Water Is The Sun's offering grounded in the physicality of playing music that is rooted in a celebratory world of sound.
"Ritual Fever" will be released on March 20th, 2026 on Trome Records, UK (LP) and Tocco Magico, IT (CASSETTE).
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There are moments of silent depth in which the winter of the scalpel of meaning and the spring of the sound-born, unleashed body look upon the world fully present. When the notes at last are heard, the ordered world is their indistinguishable score. The ritual of process is that which carries. The process of ritual is that which brings moments both transitory and immortal, apprehended by musician, seer, clairvoyant, herald; the welling tones that emanate from the crystal salt of shattered primordial sea; the melody that creeps unheard from unseen distance across the desert blaze; the hymns that blare in whispers from mountain peak and valley depth, beams of their power streaming into the ordered world, in confluence with body, voice and soul, dissolving it again and again.
PREVIOUS PRAISE FOR WATER IS THE SUN
"The pair collaborated from a distance to create "Prairie spells, a ribbon wove", with Parks in Czechia and Anderson in Indiana. Across four tracks that are each exactly 11 minutes long, Parks and Anderson make gritty ambient music that pushes forward more than it drifts around. There’s certainly a meditative quality to their thick, thoughtful sound fields, but the core of each piece is a driving element—a repeated piano chord, a pulsing oscillation—that all the other layers align around. The bulk of the album has a film-score aura, but there’s more to Prairie spells than just scene-setting, as they conjure full worlds out of simple sounds."
- Marc Masters, The Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp: April 2021
"...Ether parts in asymmetrical divisions, errant tones spiraling in one direction, buoyed by incandescent organ drones roiling beneath. It's like a small flame burning against the cold, a speck of warmth against an overwhelming backdrop. Anderson and Parks plot an intersecting course through jangling percussion and ghostly leads that reveal the crest in the distance."
- Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis
"Been keeping an ear on the lush melted sound worlds that Drekka has been conjuring up, waiting for an entry point. Holy shit this collaboration with Lightning White Bison has me feeling all sorts of strange, gnarled, and sedated vibes. Haunting piano, tepid drones, far off choirs, twisted chatter, all smothered in a rich cavernous, voyeuristic molasses."
- Ryan Keane, Lost Tribe Sounds
