Sound Colour Vibration (Music | Art | Film | Technology | Science | Culture)

“Saltland stakes out an unaffected, meditative, clear-eyed and earnest space where minimalism, dream-pop, drone, shoegaze, confessional folk, chamber music, and ambient/electronic coexist and coalesce.” - Constellation Records

Satland is a new beginning for Montreal’s Rebecca Foon and Jamie Thompson. Rebecca Foon is a gifted pianist, vocalist and cellist whose work in Esmerine, Thee Silver Mt Zion and Set Fire To Flames has afforded her a sense of respect in the creative communities of the world that is years in the making. Jamie Thompson is another member of Esmerine and is the rhythm backbone to this new project, staying true to the past and present states of electronic and acoustic percussion for minimally transfixing and tasteful rhythms. Individually, the two have stayed close with the Constellation Records imprint over the years and are comfortably nestled away in the networks of the vast system the label holds and those that extend far outside of it. It was only natural that Satland has released the vocal and instrumentally dense debut voyage I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us with the imprint last month. A plethora of musicians were brought in for these home recordings, featuring a field of instrumentation that includes guitar, bass flute, saxophone, kalimba, dulcimer, harp, bass guitar, keyboard, violin, glockenspiel, trumpet and programming. The album shines with a passionately engraved level of restrain and beauty in every moment, showcasing an astonishing blend of primitive and advanced settings of sounds.

I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us finds its origins in the year of 2010 as new compositions started to emerge in Foon’s body of works with various groups and a new outlet was needed for these new pieces. Working out of her home for a majority of the tracks found on the debut LP, Foon and Thompson shaped a bulk of the pieces in 2011 and have toured the world sense. Refining their sound to what it is now, Satland have finally revealed their debut album to the masses and it’s a gorgeous experimental chamber group recording that flows with a plethora of outside influences. Cascading blasts of post-rock energy create a stirring vortex of emotions while ambient excursions into glacier worlds radiates energy in more subdued forms in the next. Shimmering waves of  guitar chords, pulsing bass lines, elegant pastoral violin, hypnotic cello and other worldly vocals are just a few of the beautiful components that are captured on I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us.

“Golden Alley” begins the album in a pulsing and vibrant manner, showering in cascading melodic lines and lush organic percussion. A mystique tied to folk, psychedelia and other dreamy forms of music arises in the vocal and musical work, hinting at eras of the past with the type of texture that can only be extracted from the now. The rhythms are electronically driven but slide and grace through the song with a sense of the human soul. With half of the track instrumentally based, “Golden Alley” is a glorious beginning that sets the mood for the remainder of the ride and the in and out affair between vocal passages and instrumental forms that will shape. “Treehouse Schemes” and “Colour The Night Sky” take on the same type of vibrant percussive approach as the albums opener and are the uplifting beacons of light that allow a remainder of the album to flourish in more subdued forms. “I Thought It Was Us,” “Unholy,” “But It Was All Of Us” and “ICA” all carry a very heavy weight of emotion with a much restrained sense of layering and composition building. Saturation occurs in smooth sustained layers that waver but not never deviate into other realms. When percussion is present in these pieces, it is to only enhance the impact and speed of how this sentiment of darker emotion is delivered. The inclusion of saxophonist Colin Stetson on the first two pieces of the album is an incredible touch to the album considering his talents and unique phrasing to sound. The closing track “Hearts Mend” closes the album out with another graceful swan movement of sound that truly captures the integrity of the entire album. I feel an immediate rush of energy when I hear all of the swirling tones, the powerful vocals and sultry bass work that leads to the rising section of vocals. The vocal progressions that lift into the heavens are some of the most exhilarating spiritual sounds I have ever heard from the Constellation camp, taking me back to the first time I heard Alice Coltrane and many other spiritual practitioners of modern music.

The grace and delicate moments of I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us capture my senses immediately and put me deep inside of another plain of thought. A portal to a completely different world is manifested in the eight songs, widening up a layer of music that is smooth and relaxing in every form possible. The award winning engineer Mark Lawson took part in the sound grafting and mixing of this record with Foon at her apartment studio in Montreal Six Saint V, crafting spacious terrains where ambiance and smooth colors reach out with tentacles in every direction. Panoramic but raw and lo-fi driven yet full of life, a very personal aura is displayed at the core of it all. I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us is another addition in the Constellation Records archives that will stand the test of time.

-Erik Otis

http://cstrecords.org/saltland/