Ben Neill Finds a Living Pulse in "Nature Loves Courage"

There’s a particular kind of depth that comes not from accumulation, but from distillation. “Nature Loves Courage,” Ben Neill’s latest release from his forthcoming album Amalgam Sphere operates in that rarified space. It's pared down, intentional and quietly profound.

Built entirely from the live-sampled sounds of Neill’s self invented Mutantrumpet, the track is less like a composition in the traditional sense and more like a breathing system, steadily unfolding according to its own inner logic.

The title alone carries history. "Nature Loves Courage" comes from a handwritten inscription by the late philosopher and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna in Neill’s copy of The Archaic Revival, a phrase McKenna himself spoke about publicly and one that clearly resonated deeply with Neill.

This resonance is not merely symbolic here. It is also structural. The phrase itself generates the melodic material through software that translates letters into pitches, while the rhythms follow fractal mathematics and Fibonacci sequences, echoing the natural geometries McKenna so often returned to in his writings.

It would be easy for a piece built on such conceptual foundations to feel academic or remote.

Instead, “Nature Loves Courage” is remarkably warm. The Mutantrumpet, which is equal parts brass instrument, interface and sampler provides a tactile almost vocal quality to the soundscape.

Tones swell, bend and dissolve into one another, never quite settling yet never feeling unstable. There’s a sense that the music is listening to itself as it unfolds.

What’s most striking though is how little the track announces itself. There are no dramatic crescendos and it draws you in gradually, rewarding patience rather than demanding attention. It’s ambient music in the truest sense of the word. Not background, but atmosphere.

Neill’s long standing interest in systems using minimalist looping structures, live sampling and generative processes feels unusually personal here. Unlike some of his earlier work, which often foregrounds technological innovation or collaborative voices, “Nature Loves Courage” feels inward facing and reflective.

The emotional subtext does matter. Neil and McKenna began collaborating in the late 1990's on a multimedia project that was never completed due to McKenna's untimely death.

Neill says:

"I met Terence in the mid-1990s in New York, and we quickly became friends. In 1998 we began working on a collaborative music and video project based on his book The Invisible Landscape. Sadly, McKenna passed away in 2000 before the work could be completed. Prior to his death, I was invited to participate in a conference of artists and writers that he organized in Hilo, Hawaii. As we said goodbye at the end of the conference, he wrote the words in my copy of his book that have stayed with me ever since. He also spoke about the phrase in a talk available here."

In that context, this piece reads as both continuation and closure, as a way of carrying McKenna’s ideas forward without attempting to resolve them.

There’s also a quiet confidence in Neill’s refusal to use synthesizers or external tone generators. Everything you hear originates from breath, vibration and electronic transformation in real time.

As part of Amalgam Sphere, a project that also includes collaborations with Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham and Mikael Seifu, “Nature Loves Courage” functions as a contemplative center. Where other tracks explore dialogue and exchange, this one listens to something older and more internal. An idea written in a book, carried for decades and finally released into sound.

In the end, “Nature Loves Courage” doesn’t ask listeners to understand its structure or trace its philosophical lineage. It asks something simpler and perhaps more difficult - to slow down, to stay present and to let patterns reveal themselves over time.

That, too, is a kind of courage.

Connect with Ben Neill on his Website