June 1, 2018 - Leaving Records
We spend a lot of our time in simulated manmade environments, where the authenticity of places and objects is understood as someone else’s recorded observation. Everyone is an explorer when humanity’s collective knowledge and imagination is at our fingertips. We are constantly observing, connecting, and understanding. There are cultural patterns to navigate and multiple perspectives to consider, and a critical mind is critical for choosing which voices resonate with our own louder than all the others. The modern process of research is an introspective one. We grow in knowledge by looking within.
Cool Maritime’s latest project Sharing Waves presents us with a new set of recorded observations to explore. His experiences crafting songs in plein air with what he calls his “lunchbox” studio (which consists of a synthesizer in a suitcase) lend a wealth of auditory knowledge in an optimistically dreamy package of wonder. Listening is a journey through seven distinct soundscapes, each with its own special spacial flavor. The LA-based producer, also known as Sean Hellfritsch, composes his songs onsite in various locales, applying the logic of a scientist with a pen and notepad full of graph paper. Every feature observed in a landscape is assigned a mimetic sound. There are twinkling, sporadic excitements and long, steady rolling swells. The sounds are layered organically on top of each other in cacophony, and a track emerges from the improvised observational process. At first glance, this style of composition may seem completely amorphous. But, just as with nature, there is a pattern to it, a logic all its own. As living earthly beings ourselves, we will never tire of seeking to understand this logic. Sharing Waves is the infinite thrill of human discovery, of Roald Admunson in the polar arctic and of Neil Armstrong on the moon.
What I find most interesting about Sharing Waves, though, is that there is a duality. Listening to Hellfritsch’s recordings is like viewing a collection of landscape photographs. It’s experiencing the world through someone else’s perspective recorded on a modern instrument. The album was released digitally on June 1 to the general public on Leaving Records and will be experienced primarily as digital information on the internet, a mode which consists exclusively of simulacra. But, the act of listening to the tracks also requires an openness that is not usually demanded of us in our simulated environments. This is subtle music. It requires the same mental state of the listener as the natural world does, a state we achieve after consciously shedding the over-stimulation and distractions of everyday modern life. We as a society are slowly forgetting how to be fully accepting of an experience without expectation of an ending, to be open to observation without worrying about boredom or discomfort or not understanding the point, to be in a space without feeling compelled to look up where we are. After all, when knowledge is considered power, we feel vulnerable when taken out of context.
If you are open to the vulnerability of possibility, Sharing Waves will mesmerize and astound. ‘Climbing Up’ is an amble, with a resonant syncopated melody that embodies forward movement and layers added to the top of it that embody upward momentum. There is also a point where the syncopation is dropped and the melody and becomes more regular and realized—the plateau. ‘Forest Bathing’ offers an account of the forces that propel the natural world through time. The energy of the vibrant forest floor shifts hour by hour as it undresses and redresses itself before your eyes, trying on outfits appropriate for each moment of the day. It shares intimacy with you with an innocent openness as the birds chirp, the streams bubble, the rain trickles and the breeze whispers. ‘Dropping In’ is discovering an expansive cavern at the turn of a bend and peering endlessly into it. You hear the volume of water dripping and viscerally understand how tiny you are in comparison to the magnitude of the Earth you live on, long complete breaths of air. You can hear the way a moth flying affects the entirety of the space with your newfound echolocation. And ‘A Restful Place’ is falling asleep in the grass of the highlands beneath a distant setting twilight. You can see the sound waves trailing behind every object in space like the magical echoes that remain in your brain after you see something extraordinary. These are the echoes that come with you when you leave.
This is an album for nature lovers. It’s for people who like to look and think about what they are looking at for the sake of their own individual voices, for the explorers in us that miss following bugs and finding new secret spots to sit in the sublime where we feel minuscule but part of something big. Even if presently located in a city where everything is about humanity itself and our megalomaniacal design is gorged obese, we can listen to Sharing Waves quietly and escape. ☔