Synthetic Water Music: Mappa's water theme survives 51 tracks
Mappa's follow-up to Synthetic Bird Music gathers 32 artists and 51 tracks on water. The concept is coherent; the runtime is the test.
BY JOLT Staff · SEP 1 2026 · 1 min readWater is a broad subject, and Synthetic Water Music approaches it as such. Mappa's pair of tapes unites 32 musicians across 51 pieces, each responding to the same invitation. It comes after Synthetic Bird Music, yet water proves a roomier vessel: it accommodates older tapes and fresh requests with ease.
Some of the set is archival. Pauline Anna Strom's 'Emerald Pool' and Ursula K. Le Guin and Todd Barton's 'A River Song' come from older releases, and they anchor a mostly new set. The rest is largely current artists, many contributing material exclusive to the compilation. Henrique Vaz, Action Pyramid, and the pairing of Ursula Sereghy and Dorota Barová all appear. Apple files the collection under Ambient, and the track titles follow that logic: 'The Sky At The Bottom of the Well', 'repository of dew', 'Every Bottle Is A Flute'.
The curation rewards close attention. At 1:30, 'Superfici Riflettenti' has only a minute and a half to make its case, whereas 'Overlooking the Lake, in the Mouth of the Grotto' receives nearly five minutes to settle. The titles range from the exact to the silly, and 'thereby losing the weightless delight of being swept along with it' is the whole project in one sentence: water is a serious subject, but not a humorless one.
The issue is scale. A double cassette is a lengthy listen, and 51 tracks stretch the idea. Too many brief segments vie with one another, and the center blurs together; the water motif is consistent, but focus drifts. In reduced amounts, this would be a simple suggestion. As a complete collection, it demands more endurance than it yields.
Synthetic Water Music functions better as a map than a river. It is a solid collection, not a perfect one. The tracks you discover are worth the hunt, and the others you can skip.
