Variant Sea which does actually vary between the seas, flitting between Iceland and Ireland, returns with the duo’s first new song in NMC for over two and a half years.
They’ve cornered the local market in ambient music and what motivates them is recording, in music, Irish and Icelandic landscapes.
There have been a few others (all Icelandic) that we have experienced that have attempted to do something similar while the Faroe Islands is full of them as you might expect from that vertical place.
But if you think about it, juxtaposing Iceland and Ireland in any sense isn’t easy. There are a few Gaelic connections and you’ll come across the odd Icelandic redhead but not in those landscapes which, for the most part at least, are soft rolling hills in one of them and barren lime green rocky hill/mountains, often topped with a glacier or hosting a waterfall, in the other.
How in the name of Odin or Oisín do you reconcile the two?
We’re back in similar territory to where we were the other night with the latest release from Norway’s Nicholas Sillitoe by which I mean that to me the combined piano/guitar sound is immediately ‘spacey’; something that might accompany a factual film about space flight or a fictional one in which Mankind is trying to reach out to ‘others’, or vice versa – they’ve come here and are sat waiting for us to contact them as in the film Arrival.
Actually if I remember, in that film, in order to cross the language barrier with the floating blobs that were the aliens wasn’t soothing classical, post-rock music played to them? Just surmising.
But in the context of country soundscapes I suppose the connecting factor to me would be the fact that the Atlantic crashes against the shores of both countries, often violently but sometimes in a gentler fashion, prompting the swooping of gulls and other birds as they try to find some easy food.
If you think of it that way hopefully that will mean something to you, too!
Why is it called ‘Juliana’? Haven’t a clue but I promise to tell you if I find out.
Oh, here’s a thing. They have in the past released a single called ‘Hiraeth’, a Welsh word with no direct translation but which is a sense of homesickness mixed with a longing of the past. A song with the same title is on Nightwish’s latest album.
I wonder if the meaning of the two songs is the same and that prompts me to see Variant Sea’s work in another light because homesickness, separation and longing are common to both those countries.
Find them on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/variantsea
Bandcamp: https://variantsea.bandcamp.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/variant_sea/
