A big Leaf welcome to MINING – a collective of musicians, data scientists, programmers, photographers and designers.

Debut album Chimet charts the progress of two storms over the course of a week, utilising data from Chichester West Pole Beacon, a weather station in the Solent which stands in some of the most treacherous waters in the UK.

In October 2017, ex-Hurricane Ophelia and Storm Brian hit the British Isles. In attempting to place the listener within the weather, Craig Kirkpatrick-Whitby and PJ Davy created the album using 2,016 sampled data streams, translating seven days of information into 67 minutes and 12 seconds of detailed and evolving music. With mother nature orchestrating the piece, she is joined by intuitive and powerful improvisations on piano, cello and synthesiser by our Matthew Bourne.

The recording captures the sense of building expectation and tension, the dropping air pressure, the rising winds, the interlocking storm systems and the serene aftermath. The shifts are seamless, monumental and open to the elements.

The proof is in the pudding, so carve yourself a quiet 5 minutes and 48 seconds to take in the video for ‘Petrichor’. It’s a generative video by artist Sock Baeus Redding, which takes the storm data as its basis.

The vinyl edition is a little bit special – Redding has collaborated with graphic designer Oli Bentley, utilising the storm data to produce an edition of 504 double vinyl LPs, with each record packaged in a unique, digitally printed sleeve, time-stamped to correspond to a specific 20-minute segment of the storm sequence. It will also be available on CD and digital.

NOTE: due to manufacturing delays, Chimet will now be released on February 23rd 2024