Horizons by The Green Kingdom (Review)

As The Green Kingdom, Michael Cottone has been steadily releasing music for almost 20 years now, averaging nearly two releases a year for a variety of labels including Home Assembly Music, Dronarivm, Sound In Silence, and Hidden Vibes. Blending pastoral soundscapes, subtle beats, organic instrumentation, drones, and field recordings, The Green Kindom’s music walks the line between ambient, electronic, and folk, with the resulting songs as lush as Cottone’s moniker would suggest.

It’s difficult to pick the best Green Kingdom title simply because they’re all so well-made, a testament to both Cottone’s skill as musician and producer, and to his ear for interesting and affecting sounds. That said, Horizons is certainly in the running for the top spot; Cottone’s frequent and consistent release schedule has certainly not robbed him of any inspiration or ideas, and his skills are operating at peak levels here.

The danger with the sort of ambient/acoustic music that The Green Kingdom makes is that, as a genre, it can be so light and drifty as to be inconsequential. That, or so programmed and processed that it lacks any sense of soul. Not so with The Green Kingdom. Yes, it’s fun sifting through all of the layers in a song like “New Constellations” to try and determine how Cottone constructed it, but that does nothing to diminish the very human warmth and attention to detail that imbues all of Horizons’ songs, be it “Diamond Rains” with its plaintive Morricone-esque guitar notes or the playful bleeps and bloops on “Flight Path.”

I often listen to ambient music when going on long walks as a way to center myself and, clichéd as it sounds, find some inner peace. Which happened during a recent walk with Horizons playing over my earbuds, the album’s soft rhythms and gentle atmospherics perfect for the early morning calm. With its all-encompassing sonics, ambient music can easily inspire a focus on interiority and looking inwards, which Horizons does quite well; these nine songs are perfect for contemplative spaces. Reflecting on my walk, however, Cottone’s music also inspired a greater appreciation for my surrounding environs, such as the way the morning light illuminated the leaves along a certain stretch of sidewalk. This is not music for simply closing yourself off, but rather, for becoming more aware and focused.

One of the best songs on Horizons is “Don’t Lose the Wonder.” At just over five-and-a-half minutes, it’s the album’s “epic,” a slow-burning piece of delicate guitar notes ringing out against slowly unfurling drones and synth pads. Suffice to say, it — and by extension, the rest of Horizons — provides ample proof that Cottone has lost nothing whatsoever, and certainly not his sense of wonder. Two decades in, The Green Kingdom’s music remains as evocative, captivating, and lovely as ever, if not more so, since I started listening to it back in 2010 with Prismatic.