Assembled across three continents, Earthworks is more a travel diary of captured moments than a conventional album. New Zealand-born artists Garling Wu and Jessie Leov composed the work remotely, threading field recordings from London, Japan, and their home country into a single, delicately processed whole. The release extends beyond audio: a limited-edition scent by Sandra McEvoy (New Zealand) and a cover and zine by Japanese artist Sayo Watano fold in further sensory layers.
The music avoids postcard prettiness. “Saline” opens with warped strings that dissolve into synthetic droplets and a stuttering weather report, while a can of soda opens to a fizz of everyday life. Piano notes decay in “All That Remains” as traffic threatens to swallow them, a gesture toward the album’s climate-change subtext. When Leov’s voice enters, it shifts the mood from fracture to tentative reclamation. Later, “Sounding Bell” lets crickets, a passing car, and a ringing bell coexist in a space that feels deliberately open—less composition than hosted environment.
The collaboration’s coherence comes not from a single location but from a shared attention to what travel leaves behind: fleeting impressions, eroded coastlines, the fragile balance between natural sound and human interference. Wu and Leov treat these as material, not backdrop, building a record that listens as much as it speaks.
