Artist: Rachel Shearer
Title: To Oro o te Ao
Label: Thin Wrist Recordings
Catalog # TW-W
Format: LP & Digital
Release Date: August 28, 2026
 
Rachel Shearer’s Te Oro o te Ao is a bold work of sonic dreaming and remembrance. As a sound artist and composer from Aotearoa, New Zealand, Shearer has long explored the Māori concept of whakapapa; embracing the belief that the whole of creation, past/present/future is a dynamic interconnected movement. With field recordings, electronics, and voice, Shearer creates immersive analogs of earthly processes that move like tumbling avalanches and crashing waves. Subterranean volcanic activity transmutes into super-heated air rising into frequencies beyond human hearing. Shearer posits that consciousness, like the environment, is not a closed system; that the mind is an ecosystem where our thoughts are the ‘flora’ and ‘fauna’ and the perception of sound vibrations in the material world is a gateway to metaphysical realms.