*100 copies. Hand numbered double sided screen print* There are albums that slip through the cracks of time, becoming mythical objects that collectors whisper about in hushed tones. Grant Corum's Mercury Vineyard Surgeries was one such release - originally dispersed as cassettes during a 2018 tour, these tapes became talismanic objects that suggested an entirely different relationship between composer and listener, between healing and sound. Now, seven years later, Psychic Sounds has recognized what many suspected: this was never just an album, but a transmission from somewhere else entirely. The figure of The Orchardist - Corum's mysterious alter ego - operates in territories that ambient music rarely dares to explore. Where most synthesist-composers seek to create environments, The Orchardist suggests something more radical: that sound itself can function as medicine, that certain frequencies can activate dormant healing processes in both plant and human consciousness. This isn't New Age wishful thinking, but a carefully constructed sonic architecture that abandons conventional musical signposts in favor of something approaching genuine alchemy.

What emerges across these nine movements is a curious inversion of electronic music's typical relationship with the organic world. Rather than using technology to simulate nature, Corum appears to have discovered ways of making electronics sound genuinely alive - breathing, growing, photosynthesizing. The influence of Mort Garson's Plantasia hovers in the background, but where Garson's work retained a playful kitsch, Mercury Vineyard Surgeries operates with deadly serious intent. Each track feels less like a composition than a documentation of some impossible botanical process occurring in real time. The remastering process has revealed layers of detail that were compressed in the original cassette format, yet somehow the essential mystery remains intact. Psychic Sounds has approached this reissue with appropriate reverence, understanding that certain works require careful handling to preserve their essential strangeness. The inclusion of new artwork and a hand-numbered screen-print insert acknowledges that this release functions as much as art object as musical document - a physical manifestation of The Orchardist's impossible garden.

Intended as a prelude for a larger body of work due out later this year, Psychic Sounds has released a fully remastered vision with new artwork by Corum, including a stunning hand-numbered limited edition double-sided 2-color screen-print insert depicting the scenes of science and mystery involved. The original release closed with the hard-earned rays of sunshine in "Mercury's Observatory", but now the B side of this lovely LP reimagining leaves things on a more mysterious note with the electric bonus track "The Expanding Universe (B)".

Wonderful and brilliant from its first sounding to the last, available in a very limited edition of 100 hand-numbered copies, this one is going to fly once the word gets out. Like the finest environmental meditation music, it encourages a realignment with how we perceive sound, space, and the healing power of organized mystery.