There are some musi­cians who seem to inten­tion­ally stay obscure, only want­ing their music to be heard by those who try very hard to find it. Vir­ginia Ast­ley cer­tainly is one of these. Mak­ing music from 1983–96, her albums were almost all sold in Japan on very lim­ited vinyl edi­tions. Now it’s almost impos­si­ble to find any of her music, and I doubt that she has any objec­tion to peo­ple down­load­ing it since almost every­thing she’s done is out of print or impos­si­ble to find with­out pay­ing crazy prices or get­ting incred­i­bly lucky in a record store.

I first heard Ast­ley on a mix a friend gave me, and from that one track I was imme­di­ately entranced. Ast­ley makes music that feels like a gar­den on a warm spring day, with beau­ti­ful, min­i­mal instru­men­ta­tion and lush melodies. It awakes a range of emo­tions, from joy to some­thing so beau­ti­ful it’s sad. I only have her debut, From Gar­dens Where We Feel Secure, but appar­ently her later stuff is some­what more syn­the­sized and employs vocal which can be very dark. The debut is instru­men­tal and sooth­ing, and really incred­i­ble to lis­ten to. If you can find it online it’s a must down­load. But for now here a few tracks off that debut… if you have any­thing else by her PLEASE con­tact me.