Jacob Long, under his Earthen Sea moniker, returns with a transformative fourth album on Kranky, reimagining his sound as a “piano trio” in a fresh departure from his previous solo work through a deep dive into ECM’s jazz catalog. While this is more a conceptual shift than a literal one, it has led to a richer, layered sound. Recollection is a pensive journey through fractured jazz, dub, and trip-hop, with each piece casting shadows of sound in subdued hues. - Flying Out
Jacob Long's fourth full-length for Kranky began as a notion to reimagine Earthen Sea as a "piano trio," inspired by a year-long immersion in the ECM label catalog, but the compositions soon grew more complex. Elements were chopped and resampled, then layered with bass, drums, percussion, and additional keys. The result is a fusion of live band acoustics and downtempo loops, sculpted into nine smoke-and-mirror dubs of fractured jazz, soft-focus noir, and trip-hop dust: Recollection.
Like the title implies, Long's playing and production share a mood of pensive movement, shuffling and rippling like uncertain memories at strange hours. From looming fog ("Present Day," "Neon Ruins") and shadowy breaks ("Another Space," "Cloudy Vagueness") to rosy glows ("Clear Photograph") and smeared reverie ("White Sky"), Recollection deftly wields it's palette of gradient color and subdued states of beauty. His is a music of reduction and reflection, kinetic but oblique, attuned to the silhouettes of sound.
Tracklist
- Present Day
- Another Space
- Sunlit Leaving
- A Single Pub
- Neon Ruins
- Clear Photograph
- Cloudy Vagueness
- Abstract, Tell
- White Sky
