Very pleased to announce my new collaborative work with Francis Gri, ‘Drawing Shadows’, on Francis’ own imprint. 

Our third release together blends ambient textures with minimal electronics in a dense album that takes us into darker, yet still delicate, territories. 

The sounds of this work transport the listener to that brief moment of the day when it’s not quite night yet, but the soul begins to embrace a more intimate breath – a breath in search of beauty, tranquility, and poetry, awaiting that moment of peace and calm before finally surrendering to dreams.

The digital album is available as a pay-what-you-want download, and for those interested in a physical CD, a special pre-order is open with no shipping costs.

Credits

All music by Francis Gri and Wil Bolton
Recorded between Milan and Manchester in 2024-2025
Mixed by Wil Bolton
Mastered by Francis Gri
Artwork by Francis Gri

Reviews

“Two major artists in the organic and minimalist ambient field Wil Bolton and Francis Gri are back together with a mutual effort titled Drawing Shadows. They already co-created a handful of compelling, melodious, gently moving, deliciously hypnotic and serene ambient releases together such as the superb In the Still Water (Shimmering Moods).

Drawing Shadows follows a similar stylistic direction with intertwined textures and meditative looped acoustic sounds (piano, guitar, bowed strings) and diaphanous electronic scintillations summoning the spirit of nature, blurred memories, and sentimental reveries. The album elegantly passes from one emotional atmosphere to the other, sometimes colorful and light, sometimes more eloquent and plaintive, always bringing to the fore slowly enveloping melodic and floating elements. The album blends harmoniously and carefully blends many ingredients and multi-layer of tone and minimal melodies which slowly evolve through time. Discreet verdant field recordings also appear in the mix to sustain its poetical and reflective purpose. These lush soundscapes will easily seduce listeners in search of moments of calm meditative states. Another healing ambient journey which conveys a sense of spatial dislocation and inner quietude with angelic and autumnal tone colors.

All in all Drawing Shadows is a beautiful musical sojourn of bittersweet quality where neo-classical minimalism meets environmental ambient music. Recommended for avid followers of Eno‘s boundless atmospheric realms as well as blurred memories, and sentimental reveries of Mike Lazarev, James Murray, Hollie Kenniff, and Stefano Guzetti.” – Igloomag

“Après avoir été séduit par le premier disque réalisé conjointement par Francis Gri et Wil Bolton, publié début 2022, on avait laissé passer leur long-format suivant, sorti fin 2023. Conservant une durée d’une vingtaine de mois entre deux disques, les musiciens se retrouvent pour une nouvelle collaboration, issue, cette fois-ci, de morceaux composés par l’Italien, et que fait paraître Gri Projects, label fondé par ce dernier après la cessation d’activité de Krysalisound.

Ce léger changement n’influe guère sur le paradigme général car, à nouveau, sur Drawing Shadows, le caractère métallique et pincé des notes de sansula (cette petite kalimba prisée par Francis Gri) fait joliment écho aux tonalités plus chaudes et plus cotonneuses produites par les autres instruments (The Bright Sky Darkened). Même sentiment d’équilibre lorsqu’une guitare acoustique se trouve chargée de l’aspect mélodique (Crumbling Into Mist)

L’introduction de field recordings, pratique courante chez l’un et l’autre, trouve ici de jolies circonvolutions, un peu indécises (s’agit-il, sur Blank Thoughts, d’un feu de cheminée crépitant ou bien de pluie tapant sur les carreaux ?) et qui se marient impeccablement avec le frémissement des nappes ou les quelques notes éparses de clavier. Ces dernières, comme celles de la sansula, accentuent volontiers leur aspect perlé, jouant alors sur l’homophonie avec des gouttelettes d’eau (Drifting Out To Sea), pour un résultat total, certes presque trop voisin de celui d’Imaginary Tales, mais tout aussi convaincant.” – Etherreal

“Composer, sound artist, and founder of the label KrysaliSound, now reborn as Gri Projects, Francis Gri has long navigated the terrain between electroacoustic minimalism and introspective ambient, shaping sound as if it were fragile matter to be sculpted over time. His works are open windows onto silence, poised on that indefinite threshold between presence and dissolution.

Wil Bolton, a british artist and a prominent figure in the international ambient scene, explores the intersection of sound, space, and memory, weaving together acoustic instruments, field recordings, and subtle electronic touches into soundscapes steeped in nostalgia.

Their meeting has already given rise to two works of great delicacy, ‘Imaginary Tales’ and ‘In Still Water’, now joined by a new chapter, the most nocturnal and visceral of them all: ‘Drawing Shadows’.

When everything begins to slow down, and the quiet breath of night can already be felt, thought itself ceases to flow and between Milan and Manchester, the shadow traced by Gri and Bolton begins to move.

Their artistic bond renews and reinvents itself, as they exchange roles, gestures, and the direction of sound. If in their previous collaborations it was Wil Bolton who sketched the first draft from which their dialogue emerged, this time it is Gri who initiates the journey. The result is a work that, though still recognisable for its atmospheric and minimal traits, sheds its skin: it becomes duskier, denser, more intimate.

Drawing Shadows unfolds as a path of six tracks, six sonic rooms to be crossed in silence and deep listening. Ambient music that does not merely float, but carries weight with grace, etches with subtlety. The reverberations of guitars, the chime of piano notes, the long shadows cast by strings and the gentle glimmers of electronics layer themselves like translucent veils, narrating landscapes unseen yet remembered. Everything lies on the threshold: between light and dark, presence and absence, motion and stillness.

A subtle breath moves through each piece, from “Indifferent Rooms,” with its walls steeped in suspended melancholy, to the liquid drift of “Drifting out to Sea.” “Red Oak” stands as the beating heart of the album, eight minutes that seem to suspend time itself: a neoclassical nocturne gently rippled by ambient breezes, weaving their way into the folds of memory. “The Bright Sky Darkened” feels almost like a statement of intent, a slow slide toward a chiaroscuro horizon where everything blurs.

Silence is not absent here; rather, it is a silence inhabited, full of meaning, like the one that comes just before sleep, or dwells quietly within a poem.

Recorded between 2024 and 2025 and released on Gri Projects, Drawing Shadows is a testament to both fidelity and renewal—a silent dialogue between two voices that know how to give each other space. It is an album that asks for time, the kind needed to dissolve slowly into its own sound.

A recommended listen for those who find beauty in blurred edges, in misted memories, in sounds that do not shout but whisper—like certain winter evenings when one discovers their own fragility, and in that very fragility, something true.” – Lost in It