Aidan Baker - The Sea Swells a Bit...
(ASP records) Keith Boyd 02.22.07
Deep sounds lull out of your speakers and fill the room with a resonating warmth. A simple repeating guitar riff moves back and forth through the mix with the regular motion of a buoy adrift on calm seas. There is space in this sound for the listener. We let the currents of sound take us away and suddenly we’re thinking back on lost loves and good times gone by. These reveries give way to imaginal stories of soaring through canyons and floating in space. Aidan Baker’s newest CD, “The Sea Swells a bit...” is an intoxicatingly beautiful journey through sound. One well worth taking.

The CD is composed of three long tracks (the shortest of which is 15:58!) and it’s the length that gives space not only for the listener but for the subtle build of each track to take place. The amazing thing about these songs is that while the layering and density increase with each passing second, they stay true to their initial gentle push. All of the songs have a nautical theme but it’s a different take each time. The title track is the Ocean seen on a late afternoon, Santa Ana wind day. It all glassy surface and shimmer. As you listen you can literally see that silvery sheen of ripples leading out to the horizon. The music cradles your dreams in its soft hands and coaxes out further visions. Track two, “When Sailor’s Die” comes out in a totally different light. Instead of a guitar riff this time the repeating backbone of sound is a small percussive figure. This is swaddled in a cottony cushion of lingering fizz that slowly becomes more ominous as the song progresses. Lastly there is “Davy Jones Locker”. This piece is perhaps the most musical of the three and is certainly the most melodic. It combines elements of both of the other approaches in that there are both strings and percussion.

I love the muted glory of this CD. It doesn’t come right out and nail you with its cinematic qualities, it allows you to discover them as they slowly unfold. This is music for a film about the sea that can never really be made. How do you show the whole impact of the Ocean visually. You can’t. You can offer glimpses or emblematic totems. Giant glossy photos of waves come close but they still remain signifiers rather than the thing itself. Music goes that one better by being immersive and physical. Aidan Baker captures the currents, tides and depths of his own private seas here and we reap the benefits.