Layer Music Project – Secret Garden Volume 3
I must admit, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this one. The concept sounded like it could easily go off the rails: an electronic album inspired by an ancient botanical grimoire? Sanskrit mantras mixed with glitch? It could have been a pretentious mess. Instead, it’s one of the most compelling things I’ve heard all year. Right from “Prologue: The Seed Whispers,” you know you’re in for something different. The Sanskrit chanting doesn’t feel tacked on for exotic flavour, it genuinely sounds like an incantation, especially when it starts breaking apart into digital fragments. There’s something deeply unsettling about hearing ancient sacred sounds get processed through modern technology, but it works.
The real magic happens when everything starts blending. “Neon Mandragora” takes tribal percussion and warps it through glitch processing until it sounds like the earth itself is stuttering. The throat singing is stretched and manipulated until you can’t tell if you’re hearing a human voice or some kind of plant communication. It reminds me of those nature documentaries where they speed up plant growth, suddenly you realise there’s all this activity happening that we normally can’t perceive.
What I love about this album is how committed it is to its weird vision. “The Beekeeper’s Hex” could have been a gimmick, sitar meets trap beats, but instead it creates this hypnotic space where you believe bees might cast spells. The production throughout is incredibly detailed. You’ll catch sounds buried in the mix that make you wonder if the artist went out and recorded mushrooms growing. The album does get pretty intense. “Midnight Mycelium” builds into something that feels genuinely psychedelic, like Massive Attack or Enigma if they’d been obsessed with mycology instead of space. Some tracks, like “Fever Blossom Choir,” are almost overwhelming, layers of voices that seem to emerge from some parallel plant dimension. It’s beautiful but also kind of disturbing.
At eighteen tracks, it’s a journey. There are moments where it gets a bit too abstract, “Thorn Language” loses me a bit, but even when I’m not entirely sure what’s happening, I’m still drawn in. The whole thing has this hypnotic quality that makes you feel like you’re exploring some forbidden botanical text. The standout for me is “Sundew’s Kiss.” It’s more restrained than some of the other tracks, but there’s something incredibly intimate about it. The way organic sounds blend with electronic processing creates this sense of gentle predation—beautiful but slightly dangerous, which is perfect for a carnivorous plant reference.
By the time you reach “Epilogue: The Silent Greenhouse,” you do feel like you’ve been on some kind of mystical journey. The silence at the end doesn’t feel like an ending—more like the grimoire closing itself, waiting for the next person to discover it. This isn’t easy listening, and it’s not for everyone. But if you’re willing to let it take you somewhere strange, Secret Garden Volume 3 is a genuinely unique experience. It’s the kind of album that reminds you why music can still surprise you, even when you think you’ve heard everything. (8/10) (2227613 Records DK)
