Between midnight and morning, the hours are small.
In 1977, at the edge of a lake on an English countryside, songwriter John Martyn recorded his “Small Hours” using a rather serene technique which pointed a PA system across the water to achieve some truly natural reverb complete with geese.
In a nonlinear way, those hours now bleed into this soothing assembly of loops and field recordings from Belarusian artist Kirill Mazhai, also called Small Hours.
Hand-dubbed to cassette and recycled reel-to-reel tapes on newly-launched Siberian label ШАΛАШ, the music is presented as thoughtfully as it sounds. The tapes have all sold but the hours remain at bandcamp, harmonizing nicely with these illustrations by Ania Khazina.