RELEASED
19TH MAY (PELAGIC RECORDS)
Right off the back of a 6 month world tour, the
Berlin-based atmospheric post-metal juggernaut The Ocean (Collective) returns
with the follow-up to their critically acclaimed Phanerozoic double
album. Holocene sees The Ocean add a closing chapter to their
palaeontology-inspired album series, presenting a gear shift towards the
electronic world while reaching new depths of heaviness at the same
time.
Phanerozoic II ended with a
track titled “Holocene”, and now it's clear that this track was pointing in the
direction of things to come, both conceptually and musically. The dark,
synth-driven track Holocene ends abruptly and yet connects
seamlessly with the beginning of the new album: the haunting synth sounds of
opener “Preboreal”, released as the first single off the album on
January 16th.
Listen to "Preboreal" now: https://youtu.be/JAEo3VTgNWc
Enter the Holocene—the latest and thus-far shortest
epoch on the geological time scale in which humanity appeared on the planet.
Through rapid proliferation and technological progress, our species has shaped
and changed our planet in ways unprecedented in history. Moving into the human
age, The Ocean have become more intimate and captivating musically, while
creeping deeper into their own DNA with numerous references to their earlier
discography which older fans will cherish.
Staps explains about the writing process behind
Holocene:
“The
writing process of every album we’ve ever made started with me coming up with a
guitar riff, a drumbeat or a vocal idea. This album is different since every
single song is based on a musical idea that was originally written by Peter
(Voigtmann, synths). He came up with these amazing synth parts that were
already sounding huge in pre-production, and he sent me some of those raw,
unfinished ideas during mid lockdown 2020... and while it was all electronic,
it had that definite Ocean vibe to it. It made me want to pick up my guitar
instantly… and so I did, and it didn't take long until we had an inspiring
creative exchange that was heading towards totally unforeseen but very exciting
places.”
In many ways Holocene is a departure
as much as it is a return to the band's roots. It is only logical that the
album was recorded entirely by the band themselves at Voigtmann's studio Die
Mühle in the rural North of Germany and at the band's own Oceanland
2.0 studio in Berlin. This approach also led to the desire for a
different approach towards mixing the album.
“While we still think that Jens Bogren's mixes of our
previous 3 albums sound great, we wanted a more organic sound this time
around, says Staps. “So we set out on a mission to get
test mixes done by a number of people, from close friends to some pretty big
names, but none of them came close to how we wanted this record to sound, and
after a few months we got really frustrated.”
This is when Swedish producer and long time ally Karl
Daniel Lidén came around as the
delivering angel, with a test mix that convinced the band to hire him for mix
and mastering. Lidén's mix brings an
unprecedented clarity to the sound of the band, with a huge,
ambient drum sound contrasting the electronics, and a warm and fat but somewhat
brittle guitar tone that suits the diverse string work on the album incredibly
well and merges with the tone of the brass into orchestral grandeur.
Across their vast discography The Ocean have been on a
continuous crusade against close-mindedness, ignorance and intellectual
obstinacy, from the distinct anti-Christian sentiment of their -centric records
through the psychological, Tarkovsky-inspired contemplations on Pelagial to
exploring Nietzsche's ideas of amor fati and Eternal
Recurrence on the Phanerozoic albums.
On Holocene The Ocean continue their
strife, tackling subjects like the rise of conspiracy theories during the
pandemic («Boreal»), the morbid grand-scheme social quest for eternal youth
(«Parabiosis») and how our current day’s
instagram-society is epitomizing Guy Debord’s visionary socio-economical
analysis in the „Society of the Spectacle“ («Preboreal»). The
booklet of the album is indeed peppered with quotes by Debord and Raoul
Vaneigem. Debord was a founding member of The Situationist Internationale, a
French protest movement made up of avant-garde artists and political theorists
that sought to create ‘situations’—moments in which the monotony of everyday
capitalist routine was disrupted without having to buy commodities. They wanted
to encourage people to find moments of truth and real experience among the
all-pervasive consumerist lie.
By placing their subject matter in the context of
Situationism, The Ocean create an overarching narrative for their music,
unifying the separate themes of Holocene, as well as the
band’s previous releases, into a single universal message: an act of resistance
against our Society of The Spectacle.
“Holocene is
an appendix to the 2 Phanerozoic albums and Precambrian, or the final and
concluding chapter, making it a quadrilogy if you want so”, Staps comments. “It’s tackling the Holocene epoch, which
is the current and shortest chapter in earth’s history, but it is essentially
an album about the angst, alienation, loss of reason and critical thinking,
rise of conspiracy theories and deconstruction of values in the modern age.”
With Holocene The Ocean draw us into
their momentum of truly forward-thinking music and relentless live
performances. More than 20 years into their career, this Berlin-based
collective still shake us to the core, inviting us to reconsider our lives from
different angles. Holocene unites the
might of this massive act’s past and present, while creating a deeper
understanding of their world as well as ours in the process.
The Ocean
are currently on tour with w/ Karnivool
07/02 - UK Manchester, Academy II
08/02 - UK Leeds, Stylus
09/02 - UK London, Forum
10/02 - UK Birmingham, O2 Institute
11/02 - FR Metz, Haunting the Chapel Festival*
12/02 - NL Maastricht, Muziekgieterij*
* The Ocean only
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