Sound Doctrine » Seagull – Ocean From Above

Seagull – Ocean From Above

Jan

posted by Dat Mavis

Look at that, it’s already the sixth of January. While you were busy spending the last six days downloading torrents of Pitchfork’s year end best records, you already broke most of those resolutions that you made at midnight last Tuesday, when the hope of the new year was still ahead of you.

It may seem that this all doom and gloom, the truth is that we aren’t pessimists here at the Sound Doctor Blog. Actually the motto here in the office at Sound Documents is “whatever the opposite of pessimistic is, that’s us”. With that in mind, now is the time to drag your eyes off the scales and lay them down here, because we have something for you.

You see in the manic rush to get the hell out of digusting old 2013, a few bits of aural gold went right under the radar. Can you blame us for that? Well, you probably can actually, but we want to say sorry, we are here to right the wrongs.

One of those that slipped by was a new record from Melbourne’s Chris Bolton – aka Seagull. Ocean From Above dropped in October on Two Bright Lakes with a minimum of fanfare and fuss, and spent the ensuing months creeping up into our ears. To be completely fair, this record is really more of an aural diamond than the aforementioned gold. Forged at high pressure and extreme heat around 140km into the earth’s mantle and then appearing beautiful, bright and sparkling in the light of the day. Ocean From Above is quintessential Seagull, building on the framework of 2009′s Council Tree it is a loping, pulsing work which ebbs and flows with the tide.

As ever he does, Old Man Bolton has complemented his record with some beautiful visuals. The middle of December saw this video for ‘Original Shape’ released: Slow and elegant as the same passing of days it portrays, as ghostly gulls hover in and out of the shot. The track underplays its hand, staid guitar lines lie under Bolton’s wandering prosaic melodies as other worldly voices and synths hover persistently above drawing you to the close.

Buy the record, buy them all, because this is the perfect soundtrack with which to face up to the year ahead. As always, I end this with the ever present reminder that if you don’t enjoy this music, then you’re doing it wrong.

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Tags: Melbourne