Seeds Mix #12: KiF Production's Dawn to Dusk Mixtape

“Plants don’t suddenly transform from one state to another; growth is gradual, and a lot of it happens unseen.” Having spent an album taking the passion flower through birth, bloom, and death, KiF Productions turns a plant’s year into a single day. The Seeds Mix is two hours made for doing nothing in particular – garden, common land, park bench, wherever there’s room to potter, stare, and let time pass without checking it. No lifecycle to hang it on this time, just a day. Dawn eases into focus for the first hour, dusk pulls everything inward and quiet for the second. IMG_4869 Sound-wise, it’s the same juxtaposition that ran through Passiflora – birdsong, wind, bells and found nature sitting right up against synthetic tone, warmer where it can be. KiF have form for throwing in fake, synthesised birdsong purely to mess with the spotters, so don’t take anything chirping out of the speakers entirely at face value. As the mix moves from day to night, the sound follows: brighter and busier in the early stretch, sliding towards darker, slower and more dreamlike as the light drops, the shift gradual rather than a hard cut. IMG_2130 It’s not made in a vacuum either. Simon Armstrong from Errant slipped them a couple of tracks that ended up soundtracking dusk. Rob at Be With handed over a Hatchback cut before it even hit his own label. Gardens In The Sky drifted in via a mix from our very own Tia Cousins for Test Pressing. It is less a finished object, more the latest exchange in an ongoing conversation between friends who keep sending each other music. IMG_9267 Our old friend Keith McIvor haunts this one too, gently. His lockdown-era Tranquillity Mixes are where KiF first heard Inoyama Land, who show up in the dawn section, and a Saturday morning set at Watching Trees’ Bush of Ghosts this year fed straight into the whole thing taking shape. Asked what plant they’d be, Will and Tom eventually landed on a coppiced hazel in a holloway – practical, long-lived, on good terms with humans, and sat under centuries of falling leaves (“plenty of samples,” as they point out) – two hours of KiF thinking like that particular tree. Sit down, shut up, watch the light move. Full interview here: https://www.theransomnote.com/music/mixes/seeds-mix-12-kif-productions-dawn-to-dusk-mixtape/ Music To Watch Seeds Grow By 010: KiF Productions (Passiflora) here: https://kifproductions.bandcamp.com/album/010-kif-productions-passiflora Tracklist: (Dawn) The Habbiyya – Two Shakuhachis Iasos – Undulating Bell Harmonics Harold Budd – It’s Steeper Near The Roses (For David Sylvian) Raul Lovisoni & Francesco Messina – Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo Laaraji – Essence (Excerpt) Inoyami Land – Bananatron Spacetime Continuum – Ping Pong MDA Analog – Rainful Memories Hatchback – And The Walls Became The World Around Us M&M – Garden In The Sky Dieter – Ecstasy Roedelius – Tempera (Dusk) Bruce Haack – 17 Gifts For Free Children Deux Filles – Birds Old Jared – IV. Forest Pond Priscilla Ermel – Gestos De Equilibrio (Excerpt) Another Fine Day – Life Before Land Paz Sounds – Trees & Birds Hampshire & Foat – Lullaby Jonny Nash – Smoke Rings Green-House – Soft Coral The Black Dog – Chesh Ashra – Deep Distance Underworld – To Heal Virginia Astley – Out On The Lawn I Lie In Bed Orchestra Of The Swan – An Ending (Ascent)[Arr. For Violin, Harp & Orchestra by David Le Page] Brian Eno – Strange Quiet