Nature and music are, generally speaking, complementary forces. Some of the greatest pieces of music have been written about the power of Mother Nature, and we likewise put musical qualities to nature and weather. Wind chimes or wind whipping through a cave become the sound of twinkling harmonics and atonal whistling. When the two combine, it’s the stuff of legends, like music festival mud fights or twilight generator parties in the desert. Like I said though, they’re complementary, working in harmony but never really affecting one another.

Jason Lescalleet would probably disagree, however. The Maine-based artist has been pumping out a steady repertoire of ambient experimentalism, hitting a critical high point with 2012′s indelible Songs About Nothing. His experiments with analog recording equipment and techniques are among the most interesting in contemporary electronic music, and conceptually he evens out heavy music with an air of humor (see: “The Power of Pussy” from Songs About Nothing, or his 2003 LP simply titled Electronic Music). For his newest record, Much to My Demise, Lescalleet recorded music to reels of tape and then buried them in soil for months before unearthing them and compiling the results into this triptych of haunting noise.

So even deeper than the naive surface level impression that this is some sort of hippie-style Disintegration Loops clone, there is an intriguing concept here dealing with forgoing control of a piece of art and allowing the forces that be to affect it. While Basinski was an unwilling (though lucky) victim of chemicals and materials breaking down, Lescalleet willingly allows his music to be ripped apart by dirt, rain, sun, and all sorts of living organisms. The results have a—for lack of a better term—earthy texture to them. The first ten minutes of “My Dreams Are Dogs That Bite Me” is an achingly quiet movement of bubbling doppler noise, like a train slowly chugging along tracks across a lake at night. Howling feedback and swelling distortion envelop the song until it eventually collapses in on itself.

The piano tones of “A Misinterpretation of a Mispronunciation” are noticeably rounded, as if the tops and bottoms were cut off, leaving it hollowed and empty. Some notes extend naturally, while others cut off entirely as they begin. A voice enters during the song’s second half, but underneath the looping orchestra it’s entirely impossible to understand what it says, or what language is being spoken. After long enough the clicking tongues and whispered fricatives end up sounding more like the rustling of trees in the wind than an actual human voice. When the voice returns on “The Tragedy of Man” paired with a meandering stringed instrument of some sort, it’s louder yet still indistinguishable.

Lescalleet is a master of setting and mood, and even without knowing how these disorienting loops were created I wouldn’t hesitate to call them “woodsy” or “earthy.” That’s the beauty of an album like Much to My Demise. Lescalleet’s collaborative work with the soil in his backyard leaves a lot of mystery behind its creation; there is ambiguity over whether the inherent natural tones are from clever composition or really have been affected by months of weathering. I’m reminded of Forest Swords‘ Engravings, an album I distinctly remember calling “nature-y sounding” upon first listen before someone told me it was mixed outdoors. It’s one thing to make music about nature, or mix it based on the outdoor environment you’re currently in. But Jason Lescalleet’s “compost pile record” is something wholly unique and affecting, unlike many pieces of experimental music you’ll hear.

Much to My Demise is out now via Kye Records.