The work of Saapato, that’s upstate NY-based multi-instrumentalist Brendan Principato, is always firmly rooted in the surrounding environment—be it natural habitats as with Bird Sanctuary EP or man-made structures on releases like Singing House I & II. We described the latter as an effort to capture “the full sonic potential of his childhood home,” and while the locus of each project might change, the description holds across all of Saapato’s releases. Specific locations and times reconstituted via field recordings and ambient textures. Ecology manifest as music.
The product of Principato’s residency with the National Park Service on the titular island, forthcoming album On Fire Island offers another vivid example of this style. Layers of field recordings anchor the sound within the locale, with particular attention paid to the elemental forces of wind and waves which have long shaped the environment. But ever perceptive to the subtleties of a place, the Saapato sound captures the full spectrum of moods present within such phenomena. And, together with conscientious ambient arrangements, manages to evoke both the raw power and tender beauty of which such forces are capable.
But there’s another, deeper duality at the heart of On Fire Island. One perhaps inherent within any piece of art which attempts to explore the natural world in the contemporary age. Because while the release is an overt celebration of the landscape and the life which inhabits it, there is a sense of lamentation to the sound too. As though, in the years we are living through, to recognise the beauty of any environment is to mourn its ongoing and escalating loss. To understand how humanity is slowly decimating everything it should hold dear.
Thus for all of its meditative birdsong and amphibian calls, tracks like lead single ‘Morning Swale Song’ are underpinned by a certain urgency. A slow-moving feeling which creeps up from inside the spacious arrangements, something bound up within both melancholy and joy. A sensation subtle until the moment it suddenly isn’t, and you realise that we are responsible for much of the fragility around us. That we must act if we wish to preserve all this intricate detail, this beauty, this life.
