Terroir is a term often used in the worlds of food and wine to describe the geographical and environmental conditions of a region, and I would argue that it also applies to music. Not just the way a room sounds, but the geographical and social surroundings around an artist as they write and record a record. The places and things you see and the people you interact with every day can have a huge impact on the music you make; much more really than what kind of microphone you might use. A record made in Las Vegas is likely to sound quite a bit different than a record made in a small rural village in upstate Maine.
I feel like Australian ambient-adjacent folk artist Hana Stretton embodies this concept and embraces and reacts to the environment around her as part of her music-making process. Her first LP, Soon, was recorded in the New South Wales bushland, but for her most recent album, tiarn, she relocated to a small beach town called Tabourie Lake and made the record over the winters of 2023 and 2025. The LP was also informed by some homemade film footage she found of her family in the mountains of Japan where they lived in the '90s before she was born. Part of tiarn was recorded to that found footage on a synthesizer her parents had bought in Tokyo in 1991. tiarn is one of my favorite releases of 2026, and it’s both comforting and mysterious at the same time. I reached out to Hana to find out a bit more about how the record was made and she had this to say:
"I would start by creating a scene in my head, then a vocal loop – made with a pedal and played through an amp. I would then record the room on my iPhone and improvise over it for a long time. Then, I'd AirDrop it to my computer and find a portion of it that worked, quickly making markers in Ableton Live for structure changes on that first listen (swell cello here, etc.) Then I would overdub these ideas with a [Shure] SM57-type mic. I didn’t have many instruments at the time. One synth, a small harp, a melodica, and a guitar, which is why the palette of sounds is so limited.
After this initial scene + loop + additions – every song wanted something different. For “Stove,” set in Nojiri, I wanted to create a real opera being performed in the distant hills. I asked Tess Duddy to improvise for a long time over a loop. Then I chopped up bits and moved it into a position that made sense to me, then I wrote the string parts underneath. For “As It Was Before This” and “Seagull Theory II” set outside a chaotic community centre of sorts. I wanted to create a feeling of unity, so I choreographed a line dance and a pub song for attendees. In terms of mixing – the scene is so helpful. It might seem vague and woo-woo, but it's just a tool. Instead of asking myself for every decision, causing pressure, my imagined space will tell me which elements to bring in and how to mix it. Perhaps it's evening and a wind is coming from my left. Perhaps I am outside but a small choir is singing inside of the building over to my right. I will position mics and EQ accordingly.
This was the process for these songs, and mostly I didn’t end up getting very close to what I imagined. I am still new to production and having your song match exactly what's in your head is hard, but whether or not I succeeded is secondary to the joy of trying.
In terms of songwriting/lyrics, the only types of songs that I write before production are songs I make up while walking, like “As it Was Before This” and “Come Home.” Other than these, I don’t tend to do any songwriting prior. If there's a melody/lyric that comes up through the production process, I roll with it, but it's not always the case or a focus. For example, “Right Whale” sounds like I wrote it on piano but it was made in Ableton by chopping up an improvisation. Finding something to sing over it was an afterthought right at the very end. In fact, in order to tour these songs, I had to learn them from the recordings as I had never played them before. I am in no way recommending my way of doing things to someone else. My way of doing this is quite messy, convoluted and frustrating at times, but it works for me.”
If this sounds intriguing, trust me, this record will draw you in if you give yourself the space to listen to it. Thanks to Hana for sharing how she made tiarn.
