WOO

The project Woo represents the uncategorizable output of English brothers Clive and Mark Ives. From the 1970s onward the pair has captured an eclectic array of sounds, most often aligned with new age yet extending into ambient territories, jazz explorations, and spiritually oriented approaches to contemporary music. Early releases earned notice, among them 1982's Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong and 1989's It's Cosy Inside, though wider recognition arrived during the 2010s when Drag City and Palto Flats reissued albums and issued collections of previously unreleased material such as 2014's When the Past Arrives. The brothers stayed productive throughout, issuing further recordings themselves in digital form.

The Ives brothers began creating music inside their South London home in 1972, committing tracks to tape purely for personal enjoyment with no plan for outside listeners. Interest from others eventually surfaced, resulting in the limited-edition LP debut Whichever Way You Are Going, You Are Going Wrong in 1982. It's Cosy Inside followed on Independent Project Records in 1989, succeeded the next year by the far more obscure cassette-only album Into the Heart of Love. Over the ensuing decades Woo produced more than ten albums while continuing to develop their fluid new age style and remained active in a subdued manner into the new century.

In time the extensive catalog drew the attention of labels established long after the project's beginnings. Drag City reissued It's Cosy Inside in 2012, after which Emotional Rescue restored the debut and 1990's Into the Heart of Love to wider availability beyond cassette. Drag City released the compilation When the Past Arrives in 2014, gathering unreleased recordings from across the group's history. Palto Flats issued Awaawaa in 2016, spotlighting further unissued pieces recorded between 1975 and 1982. Emotional Rescue concluded its reissue series in 2017 with 1991's A la Luna. Slowboy Records brought the digital album All Is Well to vinyl in 2019. Celestial Railroads, comprising Woo tracks reworked by the ambient and psychedelic duo Seahawks, also appeared that year.