Perhaps there is water flowing in a dark cave, it sounds close, and I am checking for any water collecting under my speakers. It feels good in this hot weather, just hearing some gurgling a bit, so maybe I should be leaving a bit of towel down there.
Echoes heading off into oblivion under spiral drones
Gentle and sometimes cautious, interspace memories can be hard to grasp, unnamed possibilities are part of what makes the sound of Coral Sea so beautiful. Water is formless and tends to shiver sometimes, depending on the light moving through the swirls and the constant entropic diffusion. The mystery beckons. Memory serves. I hear tiny layers and hallucinations, which can be spectacular without always exhausting one’s full attention. There might be an underwater imaginarium, a huge tank or vessel where things are created, or somehow perceived that have never been here before.
“Often dubbed the Jacques Cousteau of ambient music, Coral Sea’s obsession with the underwater world is absolute and the music he creates on this new collection is supremely immersive. Heavily treated guitar, atmospherics and hypnotic, blissed out soundscapes attempt to represent and recreate the multitude of rhythms and resonances found within water.”
Being underwater, I imagine, brings new frequency combinations and odd sounds, like refracted sparkling activity from all around, spider webs of tiny sounds coming from every direction, laced with sustained vibrating drones and constantly changing details. Things sometimes sound like they just sort of happened and I constantly try to figure out the intentional possibilities. Before sleep there is plenty of time to just float about on the luxurious sound clouds, there is a sense of “getting lost” and that is probably part of the weave. Beauty and mystery stalk each other.
How distinct is a dream from a memory? How distant?
“Think Huerco S. jamming with Dolphins Into The Future or Drexciya produced by The Heavenly Music Corporation, the aqueous washes of sound are initially guitar based and then treated and processed until a web so intricate and so elastic is formed. This is music for aquanauts and psychonauts alike and few can escape.”
Roll up. “Out of the Blue” (4:44) evokes ideas of slowly emerging crystals ringing in a dusty place (can there be dust under water?) while at the same time the constant and distinct deep water atmosphere sounds like it is flowing in alternating directions, almost as if breathing in and breathing out. It makes for a flowing and dreamy feeling, breathing in and then breathing out slowly. Yes, this is deep underwater, the motion of the water is back and forth, almost a call and responding echo, with a haunting melodic lingering destiny. The second track is “Atomised” (8:36). At first I focused on the clicking night bugs, and I continue to speculate, maybe that is the sound of tiny metal pieces disguised as insect noises? Big crickets? No. I hear robot clicks. Maybe it’s a telephone sound? No answer. I think that the bugs are always present on this track, sometimes slightly below the mix, combined with an electronic light show that eventually overtakes everything, and now the shimmer is growing steadily. By the end of the track, the bugs are gone, somehow we miraculously fade out into the deep blue marine sunset.
Now and next, imagine sunny San Tropez slide guitar sounds, “Prism” (5:00) The light rippling into the distance under a slow moving bass pulse. Count the repeating slow symmetrical patterns with odd little variations and extra sounds, every minute is still and delicious as the bass leads the way. Perhaps a perfect slow underwater drama, as things develop and change, there are no words. There are slow pulse-forms that come and go. With “Helix” (2:44) there is a new light coming into the tank. Now there are fragments of voices from what sounds like incident dispatch traffic, which crackles just out of interpretable range. With mainly a guitar, things are getting wider and growing, beautiful audio light, going no faster, adding odd vocalisms in fragmented flickers. I think that there could be actual human vocals here, the fast feelings dissolve into a slow trance.
Perhaps there is water flowing in a dark cave ::
Check again, is that real water? I hear melodic droplets, the guitar is humming and chanting, “Shell Patterns” (6:24) has some fantastic Fibonacci drones. This time I think it sounds like we are in a big cave at night with flickering lights, the quiet electric guitar voice is explaining and cautioning, while way up at the top of the cave, along the ceiling, all I can see are shadows. I think that something is flying up there, sometimes it calls out. Quietly, the feathers make distinct textured sounds, the guitar glows from what must be barely bumping the instrument, ringing and humming, a very sparse sound. Somehow things modulate and morph along, strings are being activated. Feel echoes heading off into oblivion under spiral drones, I tell you the guitar is almost talking.
With an angelic choir up there somewhere, “Double Helix” (7:46) opens to a sense of floating in the currents, the angels are making their harmonious sound, with a dusty old movie feeling to it. The background grows but stays back there. There is something interesting going on. Of course, none of this is solid, it all shimmers and floats. After a while the choir is gone, and now there is something made of metal vibrating, the sound of waiting for someone to come home.
“Recoiled” (2:06) has the sound of glowing metal, long drones, the construction of this track is quite a bit more complex, there are increasing layers of things. I love electric guitar atmospherics, no strumming or otherwise making any loud sounds, instead the goal is to explore all those little sounds guitars can make, tapping, swiping and petting the fingerboard. “Refractions” (7:04) includes some kind of bird sounds. I could be wrong, another robot, and somehow I am thinking about shallow water. It is dark, so it’s hard to see how deep the water gets. All the while the guitar is delightfully chattering away making more of those very small sounds. The vocal sounding guitarwork is not traditional but it could be ancient, and this instance changes into something different, it forms its own definition of melodics. The tempo coasts slowly in keeping with the overall groove zone here, with a wider variety of tiny sounds as things change more here. We are passing from one medium to another on this track, like light passing through glass and into water, divigation with light interpreted by a very subtle electric guitar being gently tapped and itched.
Perhaps there is water flowing in a dark cave, it sounds close, and I am checking for any water collecting under my speakers. It feels good in this hot weather, just hearing some gurgling a bit, so maybe I should be leaving a bit of towel down there. The final track is “Colour and Line” (7:04), and I love the slow pouring back and forth, gathering those rainbows of sound from vibrating steel strings, or maybe it’s just the lights in the sky at night. Always slow and gentle, back and forth, easy, no rush, by the end of the track there are lots of moving parts forming peaceful patterns.
Beautifully packaged, the cassette tape artwork features Coral Sea’s own ocean photography wrapped in a clear case with gold-flecked tape and bespoke font by the award winning Non Format design team.
If Memory Serves Me is available on Lo Recordings. [Bandcamp]
