Connecting Trains assembles field recordings, tape loops, and overtone singing across three long-form pieces that move between concrete sound and ambient drift. Disturbed Earth, Shane Morris, and Kirill Platonkin contributed remotely from Australia, the United States, and Russia, working with train recordings, reel-to-reel tape systems, Marsynth synthesis, acoustic and electric guitars, Tibetan bells, gongs, pedal harmonium, and bicycle wheel spokes played with an Ebow. The construction favors slow accumulation over narrative arc, with environmental recordings threaded through sustained tones and manipulated samples.
The album sits within the post-concrete and dark ambient traditions of the early 2010s netlabel scene, released through Buddhist on Fire in 2012 as a free download. The collaborative method—contributors sending raw material to be shaped by Disturbed Earth's tape loop system and sample manipulation—places it alongside other distributed improvisation projects of the period, though the emphasis on field recording and processing gives it a documentary quality beneath the abstraction.
Connecting Trains is for listeners who value process over polish and who are comfortable with long stretches of textural development. The album rewards patience and benefits from attention to spatial detail, making it suitable for late-night listening on systems that can resolve low-frequency information and preserve the grain of analog tape.
