Exposé Online banner

Exposé Online

Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Seismic Telegraph — A Sea of Space
(Bandcamp Auricle AMCDR 317, 2025, CD / DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-06-26

A Sea of Space Cover art

This is the first release on Auricle Music we’ve reviewed in years, maybe even decades — was the last one the Shub Niggurath Live cassette, some early Peter Frohmader cassettes, something by Escapade, Endgame’s Avatar, or Courtyard Moth’s Alive 'n' Gigging? The label hasn’t gone anywhere, and they’re still going strong, although in the years since they have moved away from cassette tape releases to CDs, CDRs, and downloads as listeners’ preferences have changed. Originally established by Alan and Steve Freeman of Audion magazine in the mid-80s, they now have hundreds of releases available. Many of those releases (like those by the aforementioned Endgame) feature the Freeman brothers, as does A Sea of Space by Seismic Telegraph, under review here: Steve plays Moog Rogue synthesizer and effects, Alan plays a laptop (virtual sampler, Kombinator, synthesizer, drones, and tone generator), along with Jez Creek (Arturia MiniFreak synthesizer and effects) and Chris Conway (Irish whistle, theremin, kalimba, shakers, voice, coffee cup, and effects — the only one of the four who doesn’t play synthesizer!). All four member are experienced improvisers who create this music in a live studio setting, perhaps with some post session editing, though a listener can’t be certain to what extent. The album, available as a CDR or download, contains three sidelong tracks, each over eighteen minutes, pieces that are nothing short of gorgeous epics that a listener can easily become immersed in, with titles like “Year of the Quiet Sun,” “Complete Radio Silence,” or the superbly named title track. These pieces do feature some random percussion at times, but no cadence per se, rarely any sequencing — this is truly the definition of floating ambient music, although it’s not the quiet type to relax to or put the listener to sleep, instead it’s very eventful, cosmic, and dreamy, never going over the same idea twice, like a journey through the colorful depths of deep space, spreading out in all directions at once, four players each with their own ideas but attentively attuned to one another. There is nothing quite like this, and as far as I can determine, this is the first and only release (so far at least) by Seismic Telegraph; hopefully this quartet continues going forward.

Filed under: New releases, 2025 releases

Related artist(s): Seismic Telegraph

More info
http://auriclemusic.bandcamp.com/album/a-sea-of-space

 

What's new

These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.