At the end of his career, filmmaker D. W. Griffith famously quipped, “What the modern movie lacks is beauty—the beauty of moving wind in the trees.” Whether we agree with Griffith’s lament with regard to cinema, one could hardly say the same of aural media. An obvious and tactile case in point is Lasse-Marc Riek’s One Hour As Trees In Finland, wherein we are led to commune with nature’s enduring messengers without fear of intrusion. As its title indicates, the purpose of this album is not to present its subjects as novelties for escapist listening, but portals of becoming.

A literal description does little justice, if only because these windblown trees recorded in Alajarvi, Finland have both individual and collective personalities, meaning that any attempt at defining them would be an exercise in psychoanalytical failure. We need therefore only recognize that the album is divided into two nominal sections, “Crown” and “Trunk,” of five subdivisions each. Between them is a balance of high and low, outer and inner spaces, by which the ear itself is rendered leaf-like, itself windblown.

Wind is notoriously difficult to record. Without proper screening or absorption, it peaks input meters and distorts microphone sensors. Here, however, it is distant and expansive. Indeed, Riek’s technologically mediated presence feels devoid of any Hawthorne effect. For this hour, we are listeners among listeners. Hence, wind’s proverbial mystery: it is invisible yet made audible by its interaction with living matter. The beauties of this recording, then, thrive not in the wind itself but in what it activates.

Most remarkable about Riek’s engagement are its horizontal depths. We experience the rippling of leaf and limb against leaf and limb as currents spread in multiple directions from our ephemeral vantage point. The realm of the crown is populated by birds and other expected details flitting in and out of earshot. But there is also a feeling of height made all the more surreal for its quotidian atmosphere. Within the trees, one encounters a different narrative, as every ache of wood creaks through you. It’s the same sensation as when you hear your own tendons during a stretch. In this case, however, every nuance embodies an earthly history of flexion and elemental resilience.

If Alan Lamb’s classic telephone wire recordings are a modern wind music, then this is its traditional counterpart. The more one listens, the more these sounds become a part of something grander. There is not only the immediacy of the forest but also the mystery of seedlings yet to sprout, the detritus from which future forests will rise. It is, above all, the evocation of a place where only thoughts may lay themselves in beds of foliage. Its continuities remind us that such forces exist of their own volition, exhaled not by lung but divine suggestion, and that our knowing of them is one arc of a ceaseless journey.