Joel Tammik - Horisont

I'm very overdue in reviewing this, I know, it's been rather busy around here as of late and this record isn't the easiest one to connect with. The sounds of an endless ocean stretching out to the horizon, one stands on the beach or on the dock taking in the immense vista. At times moody, 'Horisont' does not make for a conversational night out and it most definitely isn't going to garner vast swathes of accolades from the general public. This material is of a very reflective, intimate design with the details kept to a minimum. Tammik composed this, Vali put it out, but beyond these bare shards of fact his newest is excessively obscured. You'll find that the pull of the sea is much too much; walk out into the surf and sink beneath it... into a wild, untamed frontier of unimaginable variety we are lowered and all around us the eyes of a billion organisms study us inquisitively. Jerome Chassagnard's last release hinted at the vividly engaging topography which 'Horisont' is saturated by.

Unlike 'The Time From Underneath', what we have here is far far more immersive. No beats decisively pull the tracks along, their placement in what I'm hearing almost comes across as an afterthought, the frame reluctantly given to beautifully wide-ranging images of an aquatic existence we as human beings just aren't designed to thrive within. Truly, the exploratory bent of discovery and sense of wonderment at unfamiliar surroundings may be the pertinent message Joel's compositions are trying to convey. Put on your tanks, we're moving through the coral and obtusely walking upon the immaculately austere bottom of the sea. One casts their eyes around in the eerily silent water while our feet kick up some of the serene sand. You can make out the shapes and forms of creatures who view us with a bemused detachment. Currents move us this way and that, overhead we can make out the crashing of the waves onto jagged, unforgiving rocks. The languid nature of this album is akin to drifting in a warm bath with the doors shut and the lights off.

Quietly my thoughts pool and coalesce into some recognizable form, the consciousness having been concealed within these unearthly tides which return me to the shore. When you hear this, for the duration of time it plays, you are no longer even part of the swarming cataclysm we call humanity. 'Horisont' reaches deeper into the mind, it makes leaps between logic and lunacy: what might be considered fanciful or even whimsical (as some of this record is given over to) becomes absolutely obvious. Why hadn't anyone else done this, it sounds so recognizable and yet it is completely baffling to take in, the sound of raindrops hitting the tops of leaves on high reaching tropical trees while a submerged bass line prowls the jungle floor in a sinister game of cat and mouse with your very perceptions of reality.

I sat bolt upright last night as Joel Tammik created entire ecosystems out of the empty space all around me, I could feel the rays of a primordial moon bearing down upon me as the stars continued their stately burnout millions upon millions of light years away. In the steamy, disorienting closeness of the organic synthesis I swear I could hear the molecular composition of the universe fraying and then coming apart in ghastly, violent spasms; in our veins the blood strains against the attrition of biology which is what I think 'Horisont' had to have been designed to chronicle This is akin to having a burst of Gamma radiation shot through all your cells and then lying there faintly glowing as the cancerous lesions begin their meal; if you've ever been tempted to have your entire physical self mapped out and then broadcast back at you, this is your ticket.

Bon voyage. Mar 11 2012