Temporary Residence Ltd. will launch Cedars, the ninth instalment of Stuart Hyatt’s Field Works series.

Hyatt, a musician and multimedia artist from Indianapolis, United States launched the Field Works series in 2018. Each album begins with Hyatt’s samples and soundscapes from a particular time and location, before weaving them into musical phrases and ultimately into song cycles intended to give the listener a heightened and more nuanced sense of place.

In 2020, Hyatt released the series’ eighth edition, Ultrasonic, which used the echolocations of bats as compositional source material. Eluvium, Christina Vantzou, Sarah Davachi, Ben Lukas Boysen, Mary Lattimore, and Felicia Atkinson featured.

For Cedars, Hyatt has again assembled a large cast of musicians, poets, and artists. It’s narrated by Youmna Saba and H.C. McEntire, and instrumentalists include Marisa Anderson, Fadi Tabbal, Dena El Saffar, Danny Paul Grody, Bob Hoffnar, Tomás Lozano, Nathan Bowles, Alex Roldan, and Youmna Saba.

Temporary Residence, in Brooklyn, New York, describes the music as cosmic Americana with western ambient and Middle Eastern influences, with pedal steel, banjo, and other instruments creating a singular musical backdrop.

Accompanying the release is a collection of poems by Todd Fleming Davis and Youmna Saba, brought to life in a color comic book.

Field Works collaborators PRINTtEXT designed the elaborate physical packaging.

Tracklisting

01. La’āli’
02. Thāk-al-yawm
03. Badron wa Qina‛
04. ’Arāha
05. In‛ikās
06. ’Aylūll
07. Ar-raḥīl
08. Ḥalaqah ’Azaliyyah
09. The sharp smell of cedar
10. Before we’re born
11. The scars of recent history
12. In the gloaming
13. Drowning in a sky of cotton
14. Each year
15. In the floodplain
16. The pasture

Cedars LP is scheduled for March 5 release. Meanwhile, you can pre-order here and stream “La’āli’” and “The sharp smell of cedar” below.