- Certain words turn up often in descriptions of dub techno: deep, aquatic, oceanic. Water seems to be the style's natural reference point, perhaps because of its rippling textures and tendency to distort space. Jacob Long's music as Earthen Sea invites different adjectives. On "About That Time," the second track on his latest album, An Act Of Love, the luminous sonorities and ping-pong delays of the Basic Channel school are avoided in favour of a more inert, sombre sound. Its swung drums are placed front and centre, but the weathered chord textures behind them seem unmoved by their propulsive energy. Instead of sending out concentric ripples into the sonic space around it, the percussion seems to be hitting against a solid, deadening surface: more earth than sea, if you like.
On parts of An Act Of Love, this sound proves frustrating. The album was influenced by urban spaces after dark, and there is a sense of distance to it, as if we're observing intimacy from outside a living room window. The heavy textures can feel oppressive, and the mood—tranquility with a solemn ground hum—unwelcoming. Even the album's most dynamic track, "The Flats, 1975," doesn't stay that way for long—through trudging repetition, its techno pulse slowly leaks energy into the glimmering ambience around it.
Long's drum programming in general lacks finesse. It has neither the rhythmic spark to make bodies move, nor the sculpted precision for a mind-expanding armchair experience. Sometimes this isn't a problem—the gorgeous "Exuberant Burning," for instance, hits an emotive sweet spot with its delicate hi-hat patterns and vague swirls of melody. But the music's weathered charm is more obvious when Long ditches percussion altogether, focussing on serene minor-key loops of smeared pads and distant hiss. "The Present Mist" and "Also An Act Of Love," which bookend the album, give the impression of putting your ear to the ground to listen in on geological processes: stately, mysterious, incomprehensibly slow. This is the level on which An Act Of Love succeeds—as a hint of things not quite grasped, tantalising shapes moving beneath its earthy surfaces.
Tracklist01. The Present Mist
02. About That Time
03. Delicately In The Sunlight
04. Apparent Lushness
05. Exuberant Burning
06. Above The Clouds
07. The Flats, 1975
08. Also An Act Of Love