Sonic Ocean

The Recording Academy has announced the 2024 nominees for the Grammy awards in 91 categories. In the category New Age/Ambient/Chant Hans Christian’s latest CD release Ocean Dreaming Ocean (CurveBlue Records) was nominated for a Grammy, along with four other nominees, out of over 175 entries. The 66th annual Grammy Awards will take place February 4th, 2024 where the winner will be announced.

Awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music, John Luther Adams’ Become Ocean was commissioned and premiered by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and Ludovic Morlot in June 2013. In May 2014 the orchestra and Morlot took Become Ocean to Carnegie Hall for the annual Spring for Music festival. Become Ocean is a 45-minute-long work for full orchestra. Adams borrowed the title from a verse by composer John Cage, written in honor of fellow composer Lou Harrison’s birthday. Describing Harrison’s music, Cage wrote, “Listening to it / we become / ocean.” A visionary whose life and work are deeply rooted in the natural world, Adams inscribed the following statement on the score of Become Ocean, “Life on this earth first emerged from the sea. As the polar ice melts and sea level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that once again we may quite literally become ocean.”

In 2018, European progressive extreme music outfit the Ocean Collective released Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic, the first half of a sprawling concept offering based on paleontology. Its companion, Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic | Cenozoic, closes the evolutionary cycle that spans all periods during the Phanerozoic Eon. The first album documented the Cambrian explosion that ended with the pre-Triassic extinction event. This chronological sequel begins at the dawn of the dinosaurs, then continues in the present epoch. Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic garnered acclaim for its relentless heaviness and straightforward musical progression. Phanerozoic II is far more experimental and eclectic. Its sounds, words, and atmospheres are pursued in ever-expanding circles, employing varied tempos, abundant electronic textures, melodic compositional frames, and selective orchestration to create something that borders on the exotic, yet remains heavy as hell.

Sonic Alter was originally issued by Kim Cascone on his Silent imprint in 1994. The original Sonic Alter was one of the best selling atmospheric records, and possibly the best on Silent. Many brain-hemisphere synchronization techniques / frequencies are employed.
Michael Mantra (1950-2014) creates Ambient music. More than that, he creates tools for "brain hemisphere synchronization" (after synchronizing the mind and the body, Mantra’s work claims to release endorphins - part of the human body’s natural pharmacy which work at the level of opiates). Mixing modulating high and low harmonic tones (low deep drones and high resonating harmonics) with didgeridoo, ocean waves, rain, water, birds and other natural sounds and instruments, Michael creates a perfect ambient soundscape…

Sonic Alter was originally issued by Kim Cascone on his Silent imprint in 1994. The original Sonic Alter was one of the best selling atmospheric records, and possibly the best on Silent. Many brain-hemisphere synchronization techniques / frequencies are employed.
Michael Mantra (1950-2014) creates Ambient music. More than that, he creates tools for "brain hemisphere synchronization" (after synchronizing the mind and the body, Mantra’s work claims to release endorphins - part of the human body’s natural pharmacy which work at the level of opiates). Mixing modulating high and low harmonic tones (low deep drones and high resonating harmonics) with didgeridoo, ocean waves, rain, water, birds and other natural sounds and instruments, Michael creates a perfect ambient soundscape…

Since issuing Aeolian in 2005, Berlin's continually evolving extreme music collective the Ocean have created conceptual recordings that reflect the evolutionary, violent character of nature itself with a musical signature that combines progressive, sludge, hardcore, and atmospheric post-metal. Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic is the first of two releases - the second is forthcoming in 2020. After 2013's glorious Pelagial, which charted the savage and harmonious life of the sea, Phanerozoic I returns the focus to solid ground; it is the proper sequential sequel to 2007's Precambrian and the missing link between it and 2010's Heliocentric/Anthropocentric.
While Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic continues some of the genre traits and strategies of Pelagial, it's musically more akin to the progressive metal feel of Precambrian…