Mandolinist Ethan Setiawan announces project of instrumental ambient music drawing influence from the Great Outdoors, titled Across the Great Divide, vol. 1, available January 24th via Adhyâropa Records

Ethan Setiawan has established himself as a key member of the mandolin community through his solo recordings and performances with Darol Anger, Hildaland, and the Acoustic Nomads. Now, on Across the Great Divide, vol. 1, Setiawan showcases a collection of compositions that dip into ambient music and stem from field recordings collected across the American West, all while continuing to put the mandolin in the fore.

Setiawan started working on this record during the pandemic, during a road trip across the entire United States. He took field recordings at parks, forests, lakes, and rivers along the way, using elements like water and wind to create sound. His eventual goal was to write tunes that incorporated these field recordings in a compositional way rather than using them purely as textural elements. Beyond that, there was no concrete vision as to what the process would look like or how the music would turn out, which in the end created something that sits together as if it were made to do so, which it was. It’s a collection of music that evokes the grandeur, vast expanses, and seeming agelessness of the Western United States.

“The first track, Boundless, came to me first. It started as an improvisation that stemmed from the field recording that sits inside the track. To me, that track and how it came together acts as a thesis for the project – to incorporate the field recordings in a foundational sense”, says Setiawan.

Setiawan feels that these tunes and recordings are perhaps among the most individual he’s made. By working on the record totally solo, he was able to tweak them to fit his playing exactly – or throw entire tunes away and start afresh. There are elements of bluegrass fiddle tunes, Celtic music, jazz, funk, progressive acoustic music, but we’re certainly looking at each genre through his own lens. In another musical department, the forms of the tunes vary widely, something he loves to play with. This actually ties the record together through a similarity in form and larger structural elements, which come back in a lot of the tunes.

Setiawan also took the opportunity to explore production, try everything, and then make decisions on what stays or goes. Because the bulk of the work on the record was done during the pandemic, he was able to take his time and do it how he wanted to, and in a way where he could learn something from it. “The fact that 1 mind is driving all the decisions means that similar choices get made across a collection of music, for better or worse. Hopefully rather than being stale, it means that there’s an underlying thread that holds the whole thing together”, he explains. The finished product is a swirling soundscape of wind, wood, metal, all interacting to create something you never would have thought would come forth from these elements.