TREES ON THE MOON

Trees on the Moon is the voice box and ticking heart of multimedia artist William Wallace, a self-searching sailor-by-ear, transplanted from Small Town Alabama to the smaller art hideaway, the hamlet of Montevallo. Yet his eyes remain fixed on the fertile future. His body work by the age of 21 acutely captures the ambivalence of a sensitive mind to the shifting social world of young attachment, swaddled in a lively sonic blanket of thinking-dance. The textures are sparkling and dark, never brooding and always active.

There is pure IDM, as in his first release on N-Lobby Sounds, 40 DAYS, lush dance from Willow Wisp, Optics, and Loom, the experimental sound-manipulation of the 25-minute “LIMBS,” and the vocally-led debut Hoping for the Worst. In 2020, our year 75, he is releasing his first full-length vocal-pop album Too Close for Comfort, leading with a surprising baritone that speaks like a supportive friend in your wandering head. Self-examining, doubtful, hopeful, and carrying the wisdom of inner balance, Too Close for Comfort brings to the surface a backlit landscape of dedicated introspection, featuring an invisible road appearing into an open horizon.

An aching hopefulness permeates his work — something that aspires to a challenging, boldly honest character which is destined to refine itself on its path to growth. This voice is consistent, if endearing in its tentativeness - “There’s so many bigger ideas out there… I’ve got somewhere to go… I’ve got to find a reason… I’ve got to fill my easel” states the driven, chiming “Weird Life.” Without slipping into delusional pity or ironic excuses, Trees on the Moon presents a curious and cautious music for the thinking young man who understands that hope lies in purpose, and purpose is made from understanding ourselves.

An autodidacting composer and sound-organizer from age 10, William foreshadowed Trees on the Moon with an early life of swimming in the music salve with his elder brother, a musician before him, laying a deep well of alternative sounds and their complicated emotional resonances. As he stepped out of childhood, he led himself into the rite of the artist’s passage by organizing an album of his time, compiling his work from ages 14 to 18 — the album Hoping for the Worst. Immediately evident was a skillful ear for arrangement and timing, executed with a wide and surprising palette of electronic instruments and atmospheric beds.