Artist: Oliva Block
Album: Innocent Passage Through the Territorial Sea
Genre(s): ambient, avantgarde, abstract, electronic
After the frankly, very difficult listen to Heave To, I wasn't sure I wanted to experience another Olivia Block album, as much as I am impressed with her and admire her. However, Heave To stuck with me, and it made me want to figure out the artist. So I gave her newest album a listen, and I'm glad I did.
Unlike Heave To, this is actually a musical album and not just an experiment in ambient sounds. It opens with what sounds like blaring foghorns at sea that begin to warp into a funeral dirge - at least, that's how I interpret it. You are hit with harsh, cold sounds. I felt like I was on a boat traveling through an arctic snowstorm, looking for signs of life in a dead world.
It's no surprise that Oliva Block was inspired partly by Ice, by Anna Kavan, a post-apocalyptic story set in a world being consumed by an iceberg and her taking mushrooms psychedelic mushrooms during the pandemic. Everything is harsh and unrelenting and hopeless, much like this pandemic has been for most people. There have been many times in which I felt like the world was ending in the last two years, and Oliva Block has channeled those feelings perfectly throughout the first tracks of the album.
The album is unrelenting and harsh until the last two tracks, Through Houses and Rivers in Reverse. They contain a sad warmth to them. They are easily my favorite tracks on the album. They are hazy and dreamlike, reminding me of sitting next to a fire as a blizzard howls outside, waiting for the world to end.
I rarely think an album is perfect or a masterpiece, but this album is both. I remain strangely fascinated by Olivia Block, and I look forward to the next world she crafts through sound.
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