(2020) Time Being - An Ocean of Time


Review:
Ambient-electronic space music at its most panoramic, An Ocean of Time, the third collection from Time Being aeronauts Phillip Wilkerson and Jourdan Laik, presents seventy minutes of colossal deep drift. The impression created is of the mesmerizing view from the window of a space shuttle gliding through the stratosphere, the sights suspended in seeming near-stillness even though the ship’s hurtling at light speed. The music’s largely tranquil character suggests the voyage is continuing apace as planned, with nothing cataclysmic portending to induce upset. Reinforcing the project theme, track titles reflect the collaborators’ preoccupation with time, the cosmos, infinity, and being. The tone is set at the outset by the title track, in which the pretty lilt of acoustic piano surfaces alongside long tendrils of synthetic washes and oceanic waves. Other elements seamlessly emerge, with shimmering guitar textures expanding the sound into a mass of galaxial proportions. Despite the music’s immense scope, it invites a contemplative, even introspective state of mind that encourages mental drift and reflections on philosophical questions. As unified as the album is, details differentiate one setting from the next. In “Here. Now. Always.,” for instance, electric guitar musings can be heard punctuating a pulsating swirl of synthesizer textures. A subtle Eastern tone seeps into the opening moments of “Infinite Cadence” in the form of gamelan-like timbres before the music dramatically swells into a combusting starburst. Whereas “Unfolding Way” builds on its epic character with unearthly rumblings that feel like reverberations funneling through the solar system, declamatory woodwind-like calls intone amidst a massive sea of electronics during “A Perfect Heart.” The album reaches its climax with the eleven-minute “Momentary Illusions” and “A Notion of Being,” which checks in at an absorbing fifteen. Here we find Wilkerson and Laik operating at their peak, sculpting huge banks of sound into towering soundscapes. However much the recording gravitates in the direction of Eno’s well-known definition of ambient, that “it must be as ignorable as it is interesting,” An Ocean of Time ends up being extremely difficult to ignore when the contrasts between the eight settings consistently engage and hold the listener’s attention. As cohesive as its contents are, the album is anything but one-dimensional in its sound design. One of the duo’s professed goals has to do with “freezing a moment of time in an artistic expression,” and said goal is wholly met by the recording.





Tracklist:
01 - An Ocean of Time
02 - Drifting Form, Ineffable Void
03 - Here. Now. Always
04 - Infinite Cadence
05 - Unfolding Way
06 - A Perfect Heart
07 - Momentary Illusions
08 - A Notion of Being


Media Report:
Genre: ambient
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits