dolphins into the future: on sea-faring isolation (not not fun)

good gravy.  i fear i might turn into some benign version of david icke listening to this.  clad in turquoise but not slavering about lizard men (who’re not jews, definitely not jews…).  instead slavering about cetaceans and rubbery dolphin love.  yup, something of the new-age about this.  certainly more explicit on this bugger than any of his other releases that i’ve heard.  but nope not the new age conspiracism of icke.  more the new age-ery of joan ocean and her dolphins into the future book:

this is the continuing story of a relationship that joan ocean has developed with a pod of 200 hawaiian spinner dolphins.  living with them for ten years and experiencing their births, their games, their mating, healing and communicative sounds, joan learns the secrets of entering dolphin consciousness and traversing multiple realms.  with the dolphins and whales as teachers, joan enters our future and brings back wisdom for the present

aye.

possibly drug addled nonsense.  but the belgian dude behind the musical dolphins, lieven martens, seems to take a lot of cues from this new agey possibly drug addledy nonsense.  whether as an amusing rockandrolla persona or because he really believes this mad twaddle.  either way it’s a much more pleasant listen than a read i’d imagine.  or as he says:

i create my music by automatic writing through my dialogues with the cetacean world and its sources of ultraterrestial information that is maybe in there.  my work stands both as a musical interpretation of the trancefers, a map of personal ways to the id.  i believe in this stage of our development, the visual and sensory sense are of paramount importance, so i hope i can reach you with this mere collection of tunes.  meditate on the concept of using the cetacean nation as a metaphor of what we could be and reach.

aye aye.

all this chuntering aside, what about the noise i hear you cry, greased and desolate, from the incestuous hell-cellar you call home?

well it’s actually quite pleasant and lovely in an occasionally meditation chamber, incense burning kindof way. whereas the last one of his i heard – voyage shopibo coast – was all skaters fug and mucky tape in amongst the exotica and the sound of gamelans engaged in fatal death match.  that had a kind of submerged swamped quality.  this is all afloaty and sundrenched.

been listening to it quite a lot during this horrible mini-heatwave that’s melting my skin and brain.  seems to fit in with the tropical aura i’m swamped with.  bit like ducktails in it’s merging of tapes and loops and easy listening ambience and gentle island/ marine murmurings while flirting with kosmische meandering.  all this played over a bloopy wash of echolocation tones and appropriated found sounds / field recordings of beachy tidal swishes and gull squawks.  like there’s some psychedelic robinson crusoe thang going on.

it’s odd stuff.  yet strangely normal.  has it’s own weird logic and flow, like some skull warping endless aquatic mobius strip. blissful stuff.  casual synths and wibbly sonar drones make a gentle swaying noise not unlike the ocean.  but cosmic and directionless.  or something.

if you dig the ducktails record (also on not not fun) or the more placid trance(ience) on james ferraro or monopoly child star searchers or vodka soap and all those other skaters offshoots (and i do) you’ll probably dig this.

if nautical nonsense be something ye wish, then drop to the deck and blub like a fish…

not not fun