Jacob Long’s musical journey has wound from seminal Dischord post-hardcore band Black Eyes through the deep dub rhythmics of Mi Ami to arriving, around 2014, in more greyscale/ambient landscapes with his aka Earthen Sea. From this point Long’s sound documents have mapped a pathway from home studio sketches to his first album ‘Ink’ on Lovers Rock before signing to the eminent Kranky Records in 2017. Once here it feels like Earthen Sea’s music has settled, not in a comfortable, becalmed sense, but into a period where he’s been able to re-energise and build onwards with each album release.
The kinetic wave-form beats on ‘An Act of Love’ in 2017, fluid dub-scapes of ‘Grass and Trees’ and soulful electronica of ‘Ghost Poems’ have seen the Earthen Sea sound steadily defining itself. Here’s something trip-hop nimble and bassy, atmospherically psyche-tinged and always progressive. Now with his fourth album ‘Recollection’ just released by Kranky, the question is how Long has gone about sustaining such momentum.
He’s said that his initial inspiration for the new recording came from immersing himself in the jazz expanses of the ECM catalogue, with a notion to re-conceive Earthen Sea as a piano trio. That may sound quizzical and an unlikely tangent to take but as you ease through ‘Recollection’ you can hear Long’s original idea influencing the music’s shape. The threads are there in the first track, the succulent Present Day, where his elegant bass pattern and frisky percussive pulse provide the foundation for some swirling chord frontage. Echo is used discreetly, adding to the dreaminess, but essentially this luxuriant tune grows from the interaction between the three core elements, the electro-acoustic beat, the bass and the keyboard layering. From this Garbarek meets Four Tet introduction, the album sees Long working with these three components and so magically, the Earthen Sea trio comes alive.
What’s striking though is the delicate variation Jacob Long develops throughout ‘Recollection’ from this initial idea for the recording. He manages to give each of the tracks its own personality without losing the album’s overall downtempo warmth. Another Space captures such duality. Beginning schmoozy and becalmed, the emerging rhythmic swing, silky bass line and lapping keyboards soon propel the tune along a glistening shoegaze slipstream. Elsewhere Earthen Sea’s songs seem attached to memories of real places and their soundscape follows those suggestions. Neon Ruins has a spooked edginess about it, built around a ceremonial tom-tom beat and tolling synth chords, whereas Sunlit Leaving twirls psychedelically to a broken beat, echoing keys and sombre bass phraseology. It has a cool resignation about it unlike the sultry nu- soul pulse of A Single Pub where Long’s bass hums a lowdown lullaby and the keys whisper soft sequences.
There’s also an air of Actress-like focus about ‘Recollection’ with Earthen Sea determined to explore every corner of the atmospheres he creates. The segueing Cloudy Vagueness and Abstract, Tell flow, very much in their own time, from rippling pools of harmonic drone to more symphonic expanses. There’s a restorative, new age sensibility reaching out here and that nurturing quality increases the more you dive into the album. Listen to White Sky, where Long’s delicate glitch and pillowy bass drift like a dreamy cloud dispatched from planet Orb. Or take in the emotional sway of Clear Photograph, its layers peeled back to give the minimal keyboard, soothing bass and nimble beats plenty of a room to stretch out.
Throughout ‘Recollection‘ it feels like Earthen Sea is allowing himself space to regather but in doing so he’s delivered an album that’s light-filled, refreshing and expansive. So not treading water then but letting his distinctive merger of ambient techno, trip-hop grooves and dub dynamics float free.
Get your copy of ‘Recollection‘ by Earthen Sea from your local record store or direct from Kranky Records HERE
