What you’ve just experienced is a harmonized rendition of our universe’s untold complexities, an auditory exploration into the very fabric of existence. It’s an invitation to not merely look but to see, not just to hear but to listen, as we collectively seek to unravel the universe’s hidden structures.
Vast atmospheric soundscapes
Hidden Structures contains meditations on time and fundamental life forms. I think this is perfect space music, there is no beat, there are vast atmospheric soundscapes, and the compositional flow demonstrates a method that can take people to a different place.
Time Being is the collaborative project of Jourdan Laik and Phillip Wilkerson. Their collaborative music is an attempt to investigate the presence of the moment using audio and sound capture. Their first album on Spotted Peccary Music was A Dimension Reflected (2011), A Place To Belong (2015), An Ocean Of Time (2020), and now Hidden Structures, continuing the dreamworld of electronica created by hands trained for classical music utilizing a variety of synthesized instrumentation, such as sometimes just a hint of strings, always light, not dense, yet with complexity. This experiment in auditory perception is said to be a BioCosmic Symphony. The compositional secret sauce includes an extensive exploration of layering. “You cannot sit down and create an intricate soundscape in one fell swoop no more than you can create a flower with just carbon.”
Jourdan further suggests that the music’s purpose is for you to find what it means to you. He says that there are no wrong answers, and it isn’t a puzzle. The listener navigates through the unseen and the unknown, from the elusive particles that make up matter to the enigmatic voids beyond our universe. The Hidden Structures album cover art by Wilkerson could be a macro photograph of an unidentifiable organic form with intricate textures and webs, offering proof that our universe is more than what meets the eye. This universe is as organized as it is chaotic, as tangible as it is abstract, and as scientific as it is mystifying. I say again that there are moments when I hear a moving mirage of strings and particles touched and reverberating, patterns form in the haze, this one might be called substance and that one might be called serendipity.
Patterns form in the haze ::
Time Being’s collaborative music is an attempt to capture the presence of the moment using recordings of composed audio and field recordings. On Hidden Structures there are more electronic compositions and fewer field captures. I hear sometimes just a hint of strings, always light, not dense, yet with indescribable complexity. Hidden Structures can somehow bring about the perception of slowing and expanding a moment of time and seems always slow and interesting, consistently relaxing and engaging without requiring your constantly focused attention, the music both rewards focused listening and at the same time allows the listener to float in their own thoughts, without external distractions.
The whole thing is a long slow fade in with abundant mystery, creating a diagram of all these elements and their locations and directions of motion. It sounds like the place is huge out here and you can see forever, the feeling is relaxing and not complex or hard to figure out. Perhaps the doors of perception are opening wider and wider, these things take a long time. Hidden Structures starts with a bang, “Unseen Foundations” (8:52), suggesting that there is a presence of some kind, it is invisible and there is a foundation which is hidden within any ordinary moment, my mind’s eye acts as a microscope, reaching into a previously hidden new perspective. I think there are lots of microscopic events that disappear. Next there is a long slow fade-in, in which to pause then go closer into that ordinary moment conveyed using long extended tones that just hang there. I am aware of the electronics and now I clearly hear a piano somewhat hidden within the drones, the extended tones, suggesting a pure sustained singularity supported by subtle harmonics.
On the next track, “Celestial Blueprint” (10:39), the perspective is stark, we are very small and the cosmic realm is much bigger. Imagine that you can fade in rising, the threshold has been transcended and the long slow fade-in is reaching a climax, or it could. I can say that it certainly just keeps going, and the piano signals. Now the lower tones are full and a few fragments of melody emerge.
After a while look upwards, hear the slowly dawning piano sky, “Framewoven” (7:45). Perhaps the piano acts as an elevator taking the listener up into the far reaches of icy cold above the infinite clouds of sound, a lake of fire. Now we are here and it is glorious, sometimes I think I hear strings and an ethereal choir, a piano within the grand chamber, winds and rattles, the big reveal followed by the shy next note.
Now I hear a rumbling with shakers, “Architects of Silence” (8:08) and we are watching someone walking up the endless spiral granite stairway in slow motion, with a long slow fade into atmospheric worlds showing more textures and sounds of motion, more mere moments of melodic grandeur in a long slow sustained bath. I think that this track is different from any others so far in that there are sustained moments haunted by fragments of melodic phrases. Perhaps we are down in an immense cave rather than floating in open deep space. I tell you a Martian whale calls in the distance, there are the sounds of vast fluids in motion, opening up from perfect black into a huge vista, the “Galactic Tapestry” (21:51). We are between solar systems overlooking the slow gravitational interplay of mingling worlds. The tapestry is very old. I think it’s a map of the gyre of interplanetary currents, where the colors as you might imagine are infinite and the distances are illusory. I think there is an orchestra in there but I can only hear grains at a distance, one long humming complex tone or clusters of tones where nothing happens and everything happens, then only one thing happens. This is the long one, fade in slowly long sustained tones tiny little things happening but mostly the drone that gets bigger. Eventually I think I hear voices describing what was seen out there, “Beyond the Observable” (7:37). It sounds like a man is talking, describing an event with fire and creatures, he could be reporting about something that happened. The sounds you might imagine during the long slow voyage, where the piano accompanies the electronic clouds, always in slow motion with long sustained atmospherics. Sometimes things boil to the surface, revealing parts of a new atmosphere and hidden creatures in the darkness.
A galactic slow motion whirling ::
There are big things out there moving around with the piano and the orchestra in the wind, a galactic slow motion whirling and spinning that works until the dawn comes. I feel like I am rising again into a “Concealed Vertex” (24:22). I guess we are traveling a long distance to see this strange place, whatever it is, it’s really big. Now we are near some string and woodwind dunes while the piano soars overhead. There are growling low drones and deep rumbling, slowly things are getting lighter and the fullness is expanding. From here the spirals lead into the darkest tunnel and everything is going there very slowly. As they flow we have a chance to see everything as slowly it turns into one constant sustained long drone that just feeds into the center. I was wrong, THIS is the longest track. I might hear calling crying creatures far away getting closer, hidden amongst the buzzing low tones opening up wider and wider as the forces gather and expand into the universal drone, maybe this is the sound of a warp drive just going and going. I love the rumbling bass with soaring lights above, suggesting a whirling mass of air coasting for centuries. The piano returns, but now I see that the piano never left.
With woodwinds and air rushing, “Uncertainty Unveiled” (6:51) represented by mystical hums and buzzes, the sound comes from out towards the edge not close by. Soon the rolling drones open up and then fade away, the piano wanders closer in from time to time revealed through the distant blowing sandstorm clouds. Perhaps there is barely a harp, the ending is sustained but soon the rumbling starts again, with the great cosmic didgeridoo choir.
The smoke is clearing, imagine a piano creating new “Aetheric Sculptures” (8:29), getting more dramatic as the winds come and go, sometimes rushing and escaping. That consistent piano and electronics explores the long reverberating surface of the sea, sometimes boiling, sometimes choppy, sometimes calm, always long and swirling, the long smooth forms start rising, forming ringing circles.
As the last note reverberates, ponder this. What you’ve just experienced is a harmonized rendition of our universe’s untold complexities, an auditory exploration into the very fabric of existence. It’s an invitation to not merely look but to see, not just to hear but to listen, as we collectively seek to unravel the universe’s hidden structures. Dig it.
Hidden Structures is available on Spotted Peccary Music. [Bandcamp | Site]
