Field Records: A.R. Wilson, Old Gold
A Monthly Listening Event at Intermountain Nursery
Every Fourth Sunday · 2:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Prather, California
Join us each month (as the weather permits) for a slow, intentional afternoon of music, plants, food, and community. A curated listening experience with full albums unfolding on a hi-fi sound system, surrounded by walnut trees, oaks, gardens, and creekside air.
As always we welcome Loretzeria Pizza our resident vendor serving up pies and RMS Radio for support with sound.
What to Expect:
Full-length albums presented in their entirety with short context intros
Rotating guest DJs and collectors curating each session
A quiet, family-friendly space for slowing down and relaxing
Locally made food and drinks served among the gardens
An exploration of the connections between art, music, and the natural world
Free and open to all. Bring a blanket, a friend, and enjoy.
Old Gold
Andrew Wilson made Old Gold as a concept record about the 1850s Australian Gold Rush. His focus was on the less romantic story of hunger, isolation, displacement of Aboriginal people, and the reality that most miners did not get rich. The music, however, is rich with old frontier and folk sounds, and the twist is that all the instruments are MIDI programmed. No real banjos, fiddles, crickets, trains, shootouts or other field recordings were used.
Connection: The Australian gold rush did not happen in isolation. It was directly triggered by California miners, techniques, capital, and even migration routes that flowed from the Sierra to Victoria. In both places the same pattern repeated almost immediately. Explosive settler invasion, land stripped for wealth, Indigenous societies displaced or destroyed, and later generations rewriting it as heroic frontier mythology instead of reality.
Old Gold has become one of my favorite records. It is not like other albums I only put on once or twice a year. This is a record I come back to constantly. It has worked itself into my mornings, my drives, fieldwork, and most all of my travels. I often start road trips with it. It creates space, distance, tension, and release. Even though everything on it is synthetic it feels grounding to me. I think that contradiction is part of the power in this record and part of why I chose it. Strange and gritty and spacious sounds.
A.R. Wilson © Strawberry Fields 2014
Andrew Wilson (from Melbourne) records under many names spanning projects between ambient, boogie, conceptual sound, and experimental composition. His influences come from combined years of study, early ambient cassette culture, crate digging, record collecting, and exploring how sound evokes landscape, atmosphere, and narrative rather than following traditional song structure.
Condesa Lucia Mixer © Mehdi El-Aquil 2022
More: Both the California and Australian gold rushes were massive land extraction events. Miners took gold from rivers and surface soil and when that ran out they started tearing up the land to get it. In California, hydraulic mining blasted whole mountains with water cannons and dumped tons of mud and debris into the rivers. Australian miners stripped forests and left toxic mercury behind. In both instances the land (although on separate continents) was treated as a resource.
One of the darkest parallels between gold rushes is their impact on Indigenous populations and culture. Here in California the situation reached genocidal levels. The discovery of gold in 1848 coincided with the transfer of the state from Mexican to American control and the new wave of settlers triggered widespread violence. The state sanctioned lethal force and declared a war of extermination, funding militias and reimbursing settlers for ammunition. Between 1848 and 1870 the Indigenous population fell from roughly 150,000 to about 30,000. This period is now recognized by historians as the California genocide.
In Australia by the 1850s disease and earlier frontier conflict had already reduced Aboriginal populations, but as miners entered new territories people were forced off their land and traditional food sources were intentionally eradicated. In Victoria the gold rush effectively severed the remaining Aboriginal communities from their homelands, forcing exile or dependence on colonial systems.
In both California and Australia, settlers viewed Indigenous people as obstacles to be removed justified by racist ideologies. The difference was only in scale and organization. California violence was more systematically driven while Australia’s was localized to a patchwork of regions.
The historical reality gives Old Gold a deeper moral resonance in my opinion, and signals to listeners in its understated “fakeness” that material wealth is the real myth. It’s a myth that persists largely unquestioned today in a culture governed by screens and abstractions, and the music here subtly reminds me that these progress narratives are as empty today as they were in the 1800s.
-Pe
Gold Diggings, Australia © Edward Roper 1854
FAQ & Schedule
More Details:
Free Event
Starts 2:00 p.m.
Parking & Accessibility
Parking is available on site but space is limited. We STRONGLY encourage carpooling whenever possible. Overflow parking will be marked. Staff and volunteers are usually on hand to direct traffic. Please follow their directions and be mindful of our neighbors and rural setting.
Our goal is to create a fun, welcoming, and safe space.
*As always, make transportation plans in advance to ensure everyone gets home safely.
Volunteer with Us
We would love your help making this event smooth and welcoming. Volunteers can assist with parking, greeting visitors, setup and teardown, or helping in the nursery and gift shop. If you’d like to lend a hand, please email us at grow@intermountainnursery.com.