Audiopile Review: In the 80s, home taping was reinventing music. The humble cassette allowed post-punk weirdos to reach an appreciative audience, empowered thrash metal demos to go analogue-viral, and lit the fuse on the exploding cottage industry of new age music. Some of the finest music of that decade was released only on cassette, at least initially (such as the godlike Peter Hammill’s astonishing ‘Loops & Reels’, from 1983). But, most crucially, cassettes created an affordable medium for acts too eccentric or singular to ever have a place in the music industry. Brighton UK’s instrumental duo Woo was a quintessential product of the cassette era. Starting in the early 80s, Mark and Clive Ives developed a truly unique sound that combined the post-punk and new age elements of cassette culture. And they just kept refining that sound. It’s like they pressed the ‘Latin’ rhythm button on a Casio keyboard back in ’82, then picked up their clarinets, pressed record, and just kept on jamming. All of which is to say, it’s very wonderful and very appropriate to be offering you a brand-new Woo cassette at the start of 2025. Of course, ‘Music to Watch Seeds Grow By 001: Sweet Peas’ is also very Woo and therefore very wonderful. Apparently, each tape comes with a packet of seed, a bonus which is also oh so very wonderfully Woo. But what particularly fills us with wonder is how the seeds of Woo’s own creativity have grown.  ‘Sweet Peas’ is a distinctly mature and contemporary work. While it has all the jaunty melodicism of their 80s and 90s work, it’s possibly the lushest and most contemplative release we’ve heard from them.

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Our season’s first edition by the mighty Woo is an ode to Sweet Peas. It is a thoughtfully curated collection of ambient, minimalist, and new-age soundscapes designed to be the perfect soundtrack for moments of sowing these seeds, which accompany every release in quiet reflection.

Composed by the renowned duo Woo—Mark and Clive Ives — this is one of a series of five unreleased albums from their archives. The release combines soothing tones from clarinet, guitars, percussion, and electronic elements, creating the perfect soundtrack for gardeners and music lovers alike. Featuring tracks like “Golden Hours” and “Earth Angels,” this album is an ode to the slow, rewarding process of growth and new beginnings. “Like nature, our approach has always been quite random,” the brothers state, “ as with planting seeds the process has a purity that can bring unexpected results.”

Accompanying each release will be a special seed insert chosen by the artist to enhance the tactile and organic experience of the music. These seeds symbolise the potential for growth and connection to the natural world, aligning with the music’s meditative and nurturing qualities.

For this release, the brothers have chosen Sweet Peas:
“To our surprise and delight, Sweet Peas can be planted in the autumn and they’ll blossom in the coming spring”

Each release will be in physical form on a recycled cassette, which will precede its digital counterpart by a few months, allowing the music to be experienced in its intended form first.

As Clive puts it: “Much like nature, music is an ever-evolving process. With this project our aim was to achieve an unpredictable organic flow that still feels harmonious.”