Winter is a season for introspection, contemplation and listening. Its the season when mother nature reasserts her rights and imposes her law on humankind, forcing those creatures to shack up, wrap up...and dream of higher temperatures.

The Australian composer and electronic artitst Lawrence English delivers a record for varying degrees of winter. Sounds twinkle and scintillate like snow under the sun, they shine like icicles, they hiss like a polar wind and seep into you through your insufficiently isolated ear holes. Each one of the six pieces is a monochrome composition ranging from the blinding whites of the snow to the blue-grays of cloudy days. Although English's music can be quite abstract at times, here it turns out to be suprisingly evocative an inhabited by an understated sense of musicality.

Recorded in 2005-2006 in Japan, Hong Kong, Europe and at home in Australia, For Varying Degrees Of Winter features contributions by Mike Cooper, Janek Schaefer and Aki Onda.