Earthen Sea
Recollection
kranky
Like finding a grainy polaroid that burns mystery into a Kodachrome past, Jacob Long’s latest album (and fourth in the Earthen Sea discography) is a dusty experimentation of nuance and reflection.
The album originated from Long’s fascination with turning Earthen Sea back into a piano trio. But that’s only the beginning as songs for Recollection took shape and matured only to be chopped up, resampled, then layered with bass, drums, percussion, and additional keys. Through the process, atmosphere and texture took shape and soon reality began to bend. Feelings of jazz and trip hop became hypnotic and served as smoke and mirrors.
“Another Space” feels like an attempt at revealing the secrets of the cosmos. “Neon Pub” is dance music for saunas as scents of essential oils blur perception. This is a space where time doesn’t exist, and this song burns into “Clear Photograph” flawlessly.
The wonder of Recollection is its timelessness in composition. The album meanders about without pushing the listener through. All of his sounds naturally waft through the mind going in and out of consciousness. Thoughts move by like gazing at the world through a car window. Loops cycle through only to be disrupted by soft variances of layering. “Cloudy Vagueness” is the most apparent.
Young does not just perceive the natural world in interesting ways, but he artfully sculpts sound in ingenious ways, sometimes so subtle it’s hard to pick up the way samples flow and effects soothingly punctuate the ambiance.
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