‘My Body had Blended with the Ocean’

Alan Morse Davies has been making music for some 30 years which is more than a lifetime for many readers of this blog. I’m far from proponent that good music is made by those who have been around for a while, some musicians’ best work is in their early years and then continues down hill after that. I don’t know if it is a loss of inspiration or just the inability to get out of one’s creative rut, but his the million dollar question for any artist whether painter, author or musician. Somehow Davies has found the answer, though my money is on that he would be unable to explain how he has been able to make new and creative work so far into his career.

His latest release on his netlabel At Sea is the two-track ambient album Submarine Time which is sourced from a 1970s French release, 100% Trompette. Water metaphors are always plentiful and often overused when describing ambient music using words such as wash, wave, submerge, drift, etc. There is a reason for that as these words aptly describe the sensation of being immersed in a beautiful ambient work such as Submarine Time. As Spalding Gray wrote in his wonderful but foreboding Swimming to Cambodia, “My body had blended with the ocean.” That is what great ambient music is suppose to be like and this is what Submarine Time accomplishes.