Average people spend their whole lives trying to acquire friendships, and artists spend most of their time strategising about how they can finally get to be alone. It’s not that all artists are cranks either. They’re just among the very few people, gurus and monks included, who’ve really learned how to spend time with themselves.
That’s why whereas the average Joe and Jane is spending their time at work daydreaming about that Summer holiday to Greece where they’ll join a group of a dosen friends, many artists’ idea of a good time is being stranded on an island where they can tune instruments to the sound of the wind, sketch out the volcanos in the distance and, most importantly, be left alone to figure out what it all means.
Sam Miller x Matt Badger’s album “Shiprock” is a musical fantasy about solitude and serenity. It’s also a highly dynamic, all-instrumental release. But this isn’t just because the playing often shoots out like lava out of the aforementioned volcano. All of the songs here start with silence or integrate in a way that practically becomes part of the sheet music.
If you close your eyes and let your imagination roam in the playground for a while, this is essentially a concept record. Album opener “Voyage” might make you think of glass bottles being broken over the side of a new ship. Bass lines play intriguing lead parts, sliding over the piano-played chord sequences.
“Horizon Bound” introduces a bit of tension as the captain waves goodbye (and possibly good riddance) to the stranded landlovers. This one features the talents of cellist Lori Goldston. Yes, that is, indeed, the same Lori Goldston who guested on Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York.
Zapping piano arpeggios that come together and apart like ripples in the ocean form the basis for “Sunlight,” possibly the album’s highlight. And the mood flips with the melancholy-filled “Blue Hour.”
It’s all a classy sojourn, one where waiters wear steam-pressed suits, hors d’ouuvres are served every meal, and where the lead piano lines are the most memorable musical element, but one that is used sparingly.
But it’s also repetition that’s key to the album’s makeup. Whether it’s through individual notes of chords strung like beads on “Hypnagogia” or through crashing drum parts as can be heard on “Current,” most of the songs are orchestrated like sequences of choruses.
Indeed, there’s something spell-like about the music, which might explain the artists’ desire to sail the seas to find it. Foghorn, for example, featuring the talents of Eric Padget, feels like a free session with a hypnotist while riding in a boat down the Amazon.
Where does it all leave us? Not stranded, no. That’s a fantasy, but not the nature of either Sam Miller and Matt Badger’s one assumes. The closing track “Ease” pushes the boat back into the harbour. By this stage, both the crew’s and the passengers’ feet are wobbling, and everyone’s trying to remember where they parked.
There are a few places where one can run towards and be perfectly alone. Sam Miller x Matt Badger’s “Shiprock” might be the closest that you get to that feeling that you assume you’ll have.
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