(06.14.05) At first, I think I really need to clean the needle on my record player and then, as the opening track of John Reading’s The Haunted Sea whispers into the room, I doubt the source of the static lacing “Elektra’s” quiet ambience. There are ghosts in The Haunted Sea; that much is clear right from the start. The ghost of Gustav Holst haunts “Elektra,” the celestial rhythm of The Planets humming beneath the melody that winds through the landscape peppered with squelches and drum programming. Voices drift in the wake of the melody, tiny choirs whispering and ululating in the indistinct distance. “Echo Angel” begins as an echo of “Elektra” before erupting into its own existence, springing from the last reverberation of “Elektra” like Athena from the forehead of Zeus. The daughter from the parent is more energetic — more alive — than her father, dancing and whirling with abandon. “Radio Row” adds a chamber orchestra to the cinematic feel that Reading has with his work, a nostalgic soundtrack quality that drenches the music in the diffuse light of the European auteurs.
There are more echoes on the B-side. “You Can’t See It From The Ground” is rife with dub reverb; as the fat beats come back through a second time, they bring a contrail of billowing static with them, a high-plains dust cloud from a distant hazy horizon. Marimbas duet with an archaic radio signal in the uptempo “Nothing Good Comes Easy,” a song that belies that title with its catchy dance-floor rhythm. Closer “Univoice” loops a vocal track through several patches, attaches it to a rolling bass rhythm and ends The Haunted Sea with a tugging, insistent undertow — the rhythmic pulse of the tide against your legs as you wade into the ocean to chase a kelpie into the deep blue sea.
John Reading’s Satellite Beach project is an excursion into cinematic instrumental music: widescreen downtempo that soundtracks an imaginary series of nostalgic images that both cleave to the past and yearn for the future. Rife with classical echoes and the tiny micro-noises of modern electronic composition, The Haunted Sea manages to have organic warmth and textured brittleness. These are the atmospheres of the sea at dusk, the breath of wind and the spray of water. Replete with ghosts. Excellent.
