Album Review: Black Brunswicker – Dreams of a Sunflower River

Dreams of a Sunflower River was initially laid down back in 2019, but here in 2026, it sounds incredibly timely.

Such is the nature of time and life that it is actually the new album from Black Brunswicker, the music project of Manchester-based Etta Helfrich. The album doesn’t evoke thoughts of bustling cities that never sleep, however.

Beginning with It’s a Long Way from Home and A Raga Called John, it has the air of the forest and the plains of Helfrich’s Indiana home about it. Time moves slowly, at least on the surface, as if in tune with the passing of the seasons. Yet when you immerse yourself in the tracks, you can hear shifts in tone and tempo that reveal that stillness has its own form of movement. A Raga Called John is especially inventive and captivating – a fusion of cultures that leaves you feeling part of nature.

When Helfrich conceived and recorded the album, she was heavily influenced by drone, as well as found sounds and field recordings. Indiana is a state defined by nature, its constituent parts being dominated by lakes, plains, and hilltop forests. By contrast, the album’s title comes from a tributary of the Mississippi River.

Though the album was compiled in Chicago, nature plays a strong role over its ten songs, the crackle and rumble at times sounding like rain, though on Valley of Gold, I felt like I was watching and hearing a steam train from a distance as it moved, snail-like, through plains filled with corn. There’s something magical about music that makes you see as well as hear new sensations, and that visual aspect is a constant presence on the album.

Helfrich has stated that the work of John Fahey played a strong role in determining how she approached the guitar pieces on Dreams of a Sunflower River – the finger-plucked strings cascade gently, like a raindrop falling from leaf to leaf.

Fahey was also a painter, which tied into the other visual aspect on the album. The music is paired with the Concert for a Live Stream project, a series of Peak District-shot videos recorded and edited by Owain Pazcuiko, a videographer based in the High Peak town of Glossop. Says Helfrich, “The ideas behind the videos were to set up some tape loops, let them play, and gently manipulate them, altering and warping the sound.”

The videos bring together nature and technology, one manipulating the other to become something different, taking a point in time and memorialising it. On By the River, Helfrich appears as an observer, though she is the point around which the music and visuals exist.

“I think my music is very much tied to the time and place where I’m at, both mentally and physically,” she has disclosed, yet you wouldn’t discern that the album in its current form was moulded in a small flat in the Evanston suburb of Chicago. From that physically small beginning, Black Brunswicker and Helfrich have gifted us something without walls, fences, or borders.

Dreams of a Sunflower River was released on the 24th of April via Nettwerk and can be heard on Spotify and YouTube. The album can be downloaded on Bandcamp – its first run of cassettes has already sold out! Black Brunswicker is active on TikTok and Instagram – you can find information on her version of La Monte Young’s 1960 Composition #7 for Slow Wave Sound on the latter.