Luke Sanger - Salt Water Motifs

 

Released: March 24

Salt Water Motifs lives up to its name in regards to each track's unique take on the hazy theme of the album. Soft and misty melodic tones pervade throughout with each track playing on this theme slightly differently. For the opening track "Sassafrass" these hazy tones take center stage along with a soft rattling sound that seems to follow the swirling tones in a slightly delayed tandem effect. "Dry Land" gives something of a mirror image to this with the tones being slightly more buried in the background and a slow swirling static that ebbs and flows through the track like the tide coming in and out. 

It's difficult to ascertain a particular atmosphere in the album as a whole. Sanger takes the opportunity to play with a variety of moods, though none of these moods ever pushes past the slow and solemn territory. Tracks like "Something to Hand" and "Head in the Saline" gives us darker and more atonal moods where that recurring them of soft melodies is almost completely absent. Then we have "Coco no. 5" with its strange and thin percussion and a melody that reminds me of those old filmstrips they used to show in school with the nearly non-functional tape player providing the soundtrack. As I said, each motif is very much its own, but blends innocuously with the others.