Azimuth is the first full-length collaboration from Tyresta (aka Chicago-based Nick Turner) and cellist Simon McCorry (Gloucestershire, UK), featuring a quintet of impressionistic arrangements that combine swells of harmonic guitar with delicately composed strings and accents of modular synth. The resulting formations convey both the acoustic resonance of chamber music, and the experimental wash and warmth of shoegaze, making for a unique creation that is equal parts meditative and narrative.

“Sea Change” opens the collection with the subtle drama of McCorry’s layered cello, building to fullness from a simple melody, and buoyed by beautifully intoned harmonies that list gently across the speakers. Deep exhalations of guitar build in tandem to a controlled cacophony, evoking the bleeding watercolors of a J.M.W. Turner seascape at golden hour, balancing diffuse and discrete textures with naturalistic grace. “Meridian” follows with an overdriven drone and legato strings, buzzing with intensity against an infinitely wide horizon line as it glides along.

“Azimuth”, which refers to compass direction in celestial navigation, offers a placid, seafoam sweetness and deceptively moving charm. Its first half evolves gradually into freeform, melodic grandeur, quietly enriching the album’s sonic vocabulary above a current of undulating drone. In keeping with its title, the arrangement is paced organically but unpredictably, as though at the whim of shifting winds.

The abundance of sensitivity and delicacy in these compositions comes in part from the artists’ humanistic kinship; Turner’s work in the mental health field allows him to approach creative efforts with empathy and care, while McCorry’s mixed heritage leads him to reflect on themes of fragility and otherness, notably on the solo album, And Where Are You Really From? (Polar Seas Recordings, 2021). They previously worked together for several pieces on Turner’s Small Hours LP (Past Inside The Present, 2023), and as their work progressed, the notion of following the stars to reach some remote, uncharted destination emerged as an intuitive thread.

On the second side, “Close to the Wind” ushers the listener into safe harbor, commencing with icy chimes and sparse percussive sounds, and peaking with a passage that exemplifies McCorry’s dynamism. As he blankets long sweeps of stacked harmony with breathy, staccato rhythms, one imagines the calm and comfort of a lighthouse beacon above the churn of cobalt depths.

“Beneath the Waves” closes the album by diving to where the light fades, and weightlessness slowly claims any sense of orientation toward the surface. Reverberating, plucked guitars warp and reverse, while sustained strings illuminate the depths and stretch out to the edges. Like the sea itself, Azimuth is borderless, timeless, and mysterious – and as the adventurous expression of two like minds separated by great distance, it carries an enormous force that makes it deeply, instinctively fascinating.