"Music for springtime in eight parts. Recorded between April and September, 2016, using various instruments, synthesizers, and a microphone that is now retired. A big thanks goes out to the many birds who were kind enough to lend their voices throughout, wherever they might be now."

Fluid Radio Review by Mick Buckingham:
A retired microphone you say, Rime Trails? This artist, although heavily using birdsong on an earlier release has given up the ghost on as much field recording as interference, and prefers to pepper the sonic narrative as an afterthought, riding a blue wave to the heavens… heavenly drones and Jon Hassell like minimalism is order of the day here. A magnificent collection of hummable ambient, do walk down our trail to hear for yourself.

“Sacred Groves” marks the second album proper on the Shimmering Moods label for Rime Trails, at least the second that this fan has known of on the established Bandcamp site. Fans of the first release will find much quietude and salvation in this record. It is comprised of eight variations titled “Sanctum” with Roman numerals marking out an archaic theme to construction. The drones are sleepy, melodies yawning in a Stars Of The Lid-heavy way that immediately perks my spirits up. Indeed, whenever music as good as this arrives it’s no wonder Spotify users and the like become so enamoured with its playability. Soft crimson pianos are threaded together like bloodlines leading to a beating heart of an inner sanctum, quite.

The genial romance of the piece as a whole is testament to its nods to the old school of minimalism, a shoehorning of serialism and bypassing straight to the romantic Renaissance artists of classical music in the 19th to 20th centuries such as Mozart and Schubert. With a generalised “time lag accumulation” device that minimalists have used and as Terry Riley now famously comments on in the recent BBC 4 documentary “Drones And Arpeggios”, the music fits right in with the contemporary era, yet seems to be hinting at a ultra space nothingness eclipsed by the meeting of the sun and the moon. Capiche? I mean the understanding of the logic of drone has always been related to space and time, cosmology – and granted space in television documentaries as such.

The success Rime Trails has is notable because of its sticking to a minimalist ambient ultimatum, ultimately I realise this is my favourite kind of music – yawning drones that are half ambient music of the contemporary era, half minimal drone. The dreamy dissonance and sombre sobriety, sticky solemnity and aquiesence to aeolian mode creates one of the most uplifting records that is not hanging it’s heart on its sleeve at all. It’s simply, a trail on the way to the sacred grove; this ambient fan’s very deified version of musical heaven.

Stationary Travels Review:
Some artists prefer to work under a cloak of anonymity and let their music forge its own identity, and so it is with Rime Trails, an ambient music project based in Denmark. Over the past few years that identity has emerged as one associated with contemplative soundscapes rich in textural elements and reflective of natural surroundings. Given the Scandinavian setting, it is not surprising to find an abundance of wintry themes, but the latest offering is music for another season. Sacred Groves is “music for springtime in eight parts” that was recorded between April and September of 2016.

Crafted from various unnamed instruments and synthesizers, each track is a verdant reverie and an evocation of mystery and contemplation in equal measure. The mood is cloistered and meditative while the sounds wind their way through wooded paths wrapped in tendrils and bathed in shifting light. When the din and clamor of the world becomes too much, you might find this is just the sanctuary you crave.