Peter Coccoma announced his debut ambient album this week and released his single “towards light” with it. The composer worked with hollow hued synths, washed-out strings and icy keyboard trickles to a wonderfully isolated but hypnotic piece. Peter uses a lot of electroacoustic instruments too which gives the music a “guess the sound” quality too. What makes it shine is the unusual music video that accompanies the song. It features a camera over ice on a boat trip and ice slush speedily zooms by. It complements the music so well because it looks like a weird abstract crystal collection but it is a real landscape passing by your eyes.
The album comes from a very personal place too. Firstly, Peter and his partner ended up moving out to their winter retreat town near Lake Superior after being forced to stay there long term with the pandemic. Whilst that turned out to be a great move, it coincided with a loved one being told they had three months left to live. In order to deal with the ramifications of this, Peter turned to the Buddhist idea of maranasati—the practice of bringing an awareness of death into one’s daily life. According to the teaching, one of the effects of becoming familiar with death is that it can shine a light back on life and the beauty of the temporary nature of all things. These two things combined created the ambience for “towards light” and the album itself.
Peter Coccoma’s forthcoming album “A Place to Begin” is available to pre-order on Bandcamp. It’s due to release on the 20th of May. The single is out now and the excellent music video can be viewed below.
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