Minimal Ambient: Caustic_gates - Aerenchyma (2024)

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Aerenchyma is just like air passing through narrow chambers, pressure shifting inside unseen biological spaces. It feels clinical yet strangely alive.

What can be heard from a plant tissue network? Ever heard of aerenchyma? Perhaps Botanist fans are already familiar with various plants, but caustic_gates hands us a microscope to observe one of the tissues commonly found in hollow-stemmed plants such as taro.

The caustic_gates project is still very young, originating from Nottingham, England, and has just released its second album, Reality-based Forms, on November 7. Meanwhile, Aerenchyma was born 16 months earlier, on July 27, 2024. Both releases reveal an ambient character shaped by the distinctively minimal sound of modular synthesizers, making it slightly different from Bålsam’s style.

Alright, it took me three listens before I finally grasped a clearer sense of its sound. “Cais do Sodré” opens the album with a logical reason for a departure—the second track—from a pier in Lisbon, Portugal. The breathing-like textures feel a bit rough, giving off a sense of tension that eventually settles in the following piece. The textures grow denser and somewhat darker in “Reimann Loop,” which is then reinforced by the thick fog blanket of “Reimann Loop – Redux,” followed by the clinking, icy-glass-like movement sounds that make the ending feel colder than before—closing the performance on that note.

“Gates Kept” and “Rng Cycles” can be considered the most synthetic and somewhat abstract pieces, making them minor tracks. “Patchouli Wash” is actually the lowest track, but when played at maximum volume, a faint humming emerges that sends chills rather than delivering the comforting aroma you’d expect—interestingly, it connects back to “Gates Kept.” Meanwhile, “Sora” and “Spaced Repetition” successfully convey their contexts: a bright-looking sky and a sense of the nighttime environment.

In the end, Aerenchyma is not just the sensation of wind flowing through an open space—it also reveals a surprising recording of moving air within a microscopic tissue structure. It’s likely to appeal more to fans of ambient/field recordings such as Circle of Pines, Nacht Plank, and the like.