From Gardens Where We Feel Secure is the debut album by English musician Virginia Astley, issued on 29 July 1983 on her own label Happy Valley Records and distributed by Rough Trade Records.[2]
The album is an instrumental collection of tone poems that describe the cycle and mirror the moods of an "indolent" summer day.[3] It is notable for its structure, moving from dawn to dusk, and its use of natural sound effects, over which co-producer Russell Webb recorded Astley's improvised playing.
From Gardens Where We Feel Secure peaked at number four on the UK Independent Albums chart. Prior to the album's release, two of its tracks, "A Summer Long Since Past" and "It's Too Hot to Sleep", were issued on the 12" edition of Astley's single "Love's a Lonely Place to Be".[4]
Astley later re-recorded "A Summer Long Since Past" for her 1986 album Hope in a Darkened Heart.[5]From Gardens Where We Feel Secure was remastered and reissued by Happy Valley and Rough Trade as a CD in 2003.[6]
An alternate cover shows a photograph of Cowleaze Wood covered in bluebells, a 70-acre woodland in the Chiltern Hills, England.
Almost entirely instrumental, save for a few wordless vocals on "A Summer Long Since Past," and featuring little instrumentation besides Astley's piano and some subtle woodwinds, the album is a lovely 35-minute meditation built around field recordings Astley made of the ambient sounds of the rural English countryside. This description makes the album sound much more twee and insubstantial than it actually is; however, Astley is no mere ambient noodler. These nine songs are melodically rich and varied; mood pieces in the truest sense of the term.[3]
^Pitchfork Staff (10 September 2018). "The 200 Best Albums of the 1980s". Pitchfork. Retrieved 24 April 2023. ...Virginia Astley's deeply beautiful In the Gardens Where We Feel Secure, an inimitable album of ambient music.
