Grasslands @ The Richard Jefferies Museum, Swindon, 4th July 26

If ever an artist and a gig location were perfectly suited, it was watching Grasslands in the shaded courtyard outside the museum dedicated to local nature writer Richard Jefferies. On top of that, being 4th July, as you will obviously all be very aware, is most famous for being National Meadow Day, and the weather was perfect; an afternoon of music and talk under the hiss of wind-caressed trees as dappled sun spots chased each other across the leaf-strewn floor awaited the small but perfectly formed audience.

Grasslands, aka Tom Haynes, is many things – his day job is in environmental funding, although he is still found in, literally, boots-on-the-ground mode surveying all things marsh and meadow; he is known in the model train world for building convention-worthy dioramas, he is a published author with a moss fixation, is a frequent face on Clarkson’s Farm and, of course, he is a maker of all manner of melliflouos music. And it is where his green fingers touch the strings and synths and sample pads that Grasslands is born.

Grass may seem such a fairly insignificant part of our planet, but as this lecture…or T.O.M. talk, as I like to call it, tells us, the world would be very different without it. We follow his tale through epochs and eras; we come to understand how wide-open grasslands drove mammalian evolution and how, with the advent of farming, the grasses we call cereal crops were central to the development of civilization and the settlement of our own formative species.

Just as a talk, this would be fascinating stuff, but this is the world of Grasslands, and so as he delivers it, he builds soundscapes behind his words, intersperses the lecture with full songs, and makes music that wanders between ambient drift and fuzzed-out psychedelia, riff-infused rock, and digital delirium. It’s bizarre, it’s bonkers, it’s beguiling, it’s brilliant. There was even room for a Q&A session at the end, which allowed him to talk about where grass goes next in a human-controlled, genetically modified world and even what his favorite grasses are and why.

It was a lecture peppered with wit and wisdom, a talk that was educational and entertaining, a show full of music unlike much you have heard before. And as I said at the start, in that cool breeze courtyard and under the warmth of a tree-sheltered shade, it was both mad and marvelous and magical!