- The Dutch artist loops samples of his friends and loved ones into music that highlights the beauty of the human voice and the connections it can create.
- It's tempting to characterize the voices on Choral Feeling, Oceanic's dazzling debut album, as disembodied. Job Oberman asked more than 30 of his friends to sing—either with him or alone—and used their voices to construct the record from the bottom-up. He chops, warps and rearranges those recordings into pocket-sized, polyphonic symphonies. Some of it skews towards the techno he's been putting out under the Oceanic alias for nearly a decade. Other tracks are less recognizable, resembling Sacred Harp singing, the cascading, shape note spirituals that fill old wooden churches in the American South. All of the smallest fragments—breath intakes acting as hi-hats, tongue clicks used as percussion—still retain their identifiable humanity.
Choral Feeling doesn't exist in a vacuum. There's been plenty of ecstatic electronic music made from or with the human voice in recent years. Kara-Lis Coverdale's brilliant A 480, released by Constellation Tatsu in 2014, featured ultra-processed choir samples woven together into complex ambient pieces. Many of Matthew Herbert's classic house tracks looped vocal sounds into textural accents that deepened his already irresistible grooves. Andy Stott's "Numb," a standout from his 2012 breakthrough album Luxury Problems, used clips of Alison Skidmore's breath to give the lumbering trudge of his techno a more kinetic edge.
But Oberman's method here is key: he doesn't reduce these voice clips to mere MIDI data or shape them into synthesizer tones. Even pitch-shifted vocals, like the syncopated "ah"'s that drive the Baltimore club propulsion of "Self-fulfilling," or the moans that haunt the forest techno of "KxT" sound like actual people. Early singles "Sing It To Happen" and "Sunshine, Dear" weave sung or spoken words into hypnotic grooves, meditations on communication that reach Darmok and Jalad levels.
Oberman builds tracks with purpose, patiently slotting each sound together into a mesmerizing churn. The sonics on Choral Feeling are a bit more maximalist than the usual restraint of his previous work, but his arrangements are laser-focused, taking unexpected but thrilling turns. "Sing It To Happen" propels forward with a muted urgency, deepening as each rhythmic element comes into focus. The song seems to end, only to break into a torrent of staccato voices. "C-Loli" begins with tiny one-note pulses before shifting into a melodic latticework that sounds like Elizabeth Fraser on a glitching Zoom call. By the end of the song, many of the short vocal clips have dissolved into longer, droning voices, creating an enormous undulating drone. The combination of Oberman's deft composition and the beauty of the voices gives Choral Feeling a gripping, deeply emotional weight.
Describing the origins of the record, Oberman said he wanted to create an album that would help reverse the "[disappearance of singing in] western cultures." What I suspect he's getting at is less that folks simply aren't singing anymore, but that true community is hard to come by these days. The nature of our current stage of capitalism, endless culture wars and intrusive, unavoidable technology keep us siloed away from each other. To sing is to open up, and to sing together is to recognize and validate one another's vulnerability. As Oberman puts it, "It harmonizes wavelengths and energies in minds and bodies."
It's meaningful that Oberman specifically asked loved ones to contribute their voices to this project rather than sampling from acapella records or YouTube performances. If there's a political statement to be made here, it's a gentle reinforcement that we are much stronger en masse than alone, especially in this time of constant tumult. But put more simply, Choral Feeling is about experiencing joy together. It's easier than ever to significantly reduce the circumference of one's existence, but this record serves to remind us of the beauty—the absolute necessity—of connection.
Tracklist01. Wren's Joy
02. Self-fulfilling
03. Sing it To Happen
04. KxT
05. Cac/cio
06. Open Them Open
07. Sunshine, dear
08. C-Loli
09. Even If I Lose Everything
10. Who Comes Next