The Trees, They Grow So Slow

Leipzig, April 15th, 2024

THE TREES, THEY GROW SO SLOW is the result of dozens of beautiful encounters with trees in 2020 and 2021. Those were strange times back then, weren’t they? But all the isolation did me one good: it slowed me down. I took hour-long walks every day, carrying our newborn child. I loved walking under trees, looking up — feeling the sunbeams glimmer through the leaves, hearing their whispers. They grow so slowly; strong and steady. A fascinating miracle: the calm, intimidating strength of a being so durable and slow, yet contradicted by its sheer vulnerability in the face of human impact.

As I started working on the basic tracks for TREES, I had no idea it was about my personal relationship with trees. It just happened, in the late summer of 2021, that I encountered a 300+ year-old oak tree whilst traveling. Fascinated by the unbelievable complexity of its leaves whispering in the waves of wind, I made hours of field recordings. I knew they needed to be in the piece that I called THE TREES, THEY GROW SO SLOW that day.

This piece is dedicated to the fact that every being on this planet originated from the same single cell in an ocean some 2.5 billion years ago. The trees you hear on this record — and yourself — are the offspring of that same one-celled ancestor, nearly washed away by the currents of time.

I want you to ponder this whilst listening.

Malo