Wednesday, 5 May 2021

Dark Ambient Review: Reflections at the Sea

Dark Ambient Review: Reflections at the Sea


Review By Casey Douglass



Reflections at the Sea


I’ve always had as much time for urban environments as I have for the peace or bleakness of nature. Even though beautiful vistas have their place, there is a lot to be said for a small park backed by the thrum of traffic in a busy city. Reflections at the Sea is a dark ambient album from SiJ and Textere Oris, an album that, at its very core, brings these two forces together.

The album description tells of a person who wants to see the sea. Sadly, they are living alone in a big city. One day, a fog blankets the concrete, glass and metal around them. The environment feels different, and as the album plays, the fog seems to bring said person to a place in which their fantasies are almost at hand.

For me, Reflections at the Sea is an album that feels light and peaceful. There are field-recorded sounds of church bells and people talking, but there are also soothing drones, pipe or flute-like tones, and pleasant vocals. These elements make the fog envisioned in the album description one that is illuminated by golden sunlight, rather than a dreary, damp smothering greyness that fogs so often can become.

I think that I’d have to say that Train Leaves in the Rain is my favourite track. It opens with a chiming, undulating space, and a mellow low tone. A “staticy” rain emerges, a voice crackling through a tannoy system joining it. A smooth drone sits beneath everything, floating female vocals and train sounds sitting comfortably among the various plucked notes that occur in the latter half. This is a peaceful track, and one which merges the mechanical with the ethereal with adept ease.

Veter 101 is another of the tracks that stood out for me. It also makes use of a tannoy-style announcement. A small tone sounds, like a mouse trying to clear dust from a pipe. A muted buzzing shortly follows, making me thing of a tiny dot matrix printer spooling out tiny receipts. Okay, my mind is now thinking about mice buying train-tickets for their own micro train. This track is features a plucked melody, piano notes, and a variety of voices. It has an energetic feeling, but like the Train Leaves in the Rain, it seems to merge a variety of mechanical recordings with pleasing light tones.

Finally, the track K Moryu is the last I will mention. It’s a track where the sea very much makes its presence known. It begins with a high whistling tone, lapping waves, a deep beat and a male vocal. The cascading rattle of a rain-stick sounds at intervals, a variety of instruments playing their own particular notes and melodies throughout the track. This is the longest track on the album, sitting at almost twelve minutes in length, and it gives the listener ample time to bathe in the lulling qualities it provides.

Reflections at the Sea is the ideal kind of album for anyone who might be stuck somewhere and would love to be somewhere else. It offers that “world at a distance” feeling, when the weather or other circumstances make the familiar seem a bit different, when the usual view down the road is changed by fog, and you get the feeling that somewhere else might just have moved in to take its place, even if just for a little while.

Visit the Reflections at the Sea page on Bandcamp for more information. You can also listen to Train Leaves in the Rain below:



I was given a review copy of this album.


Album Title: Reflections at the Sea

Album Artists: SiJ & Textere Oris

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: 20 April 2021