What does As Seas Exhale sound like?

Modern classical music, tinkered with electronics, and dressed in post-rock’s clothes.

The review of ‘Boreal’ by As Seas Exhale

As Seas Exhale places his music in a very clever cross-section of various hues of ambient music. There is the contemporary classical element with soft, intimate, almost felt piano. Bubbling, drifting, ephemeral synths jingle and swim through the world unhurried. Electric guitar becomes a textural drone. At times, post-rock shades of drums and guitars seep in. A drizzle of strings might haunt certain tracks. It’s an ambient playground, and ‘Boreal’ is abundant with ideas and uplifting catharsis from start to end. If you need to unwind, this is an album of many moods.

‘Woven Glow’ opens as a gentle swirl of each element combined. Soft piano and twinkling synths give way to soft drums, as if post-rock dressed up in modern classical clothes. The delicate balance of what is organic and what is electric blurs lines, and that’s one of the album’s greatest gifts. ‘Rime’ follows, taking a more percussive, almost modern-jazz route. The piano echoes out with a generative synth cloud of reverb notes trailing each key. It’s warming. ‘Woven Glow’ lights the spark, but ‘Rime’ wraps you in a winter blanket and serves you cocoa. The two tracks work perfectly as a pair.

Turning towards cloudy drifts of ambient sound design, ‘Hylocomium splendens’ follows. It’s a playful synth hum with generative piano tinkles and glistening gurgles of synths that sound like fresh dew on a sunny spring morning. Fresh. Lively. Quietly confident. It’s a track that could be easily lost among bigger tracks, but it’s a grower over time. Again, thinking in pairs, ‘Psithurism’ follows with its seven-and-a-half-minute panoramic beauty. The first 3/5th of the track is bass-less keyboard pads and gentle nods towards glitchy pointillistic gurgles of a lead synth. For a few minutes, an electronic drum kit slips in to provide a gentle take on drum and bass beats before exiting back into a Morse-code-like mist. Ambient No Man’s Sky, anyone?

The middle section of the album has As Seas Exhale turn towards strings and a distinctly Nordic approach to contemporary classical music. ‘Óbyggð’ is a slow-rolling string arrangement that evokes the feeling of a character’s journey reaching an internal agreement to move forward at peace. It could score an indie movie perfectly, as it has that tape-worn ennui to it that indie soundtracks embrace so well. ‘Komorebi’ is more melodic, as gentle, rounded piano blooms pitter-patter over echoes of strings and their distant reverb. Reverb is often As Seas Exhale’s go-to for creating huge atmospheres or rhythmic flow. With ‘Komorebi’, it’s the first time the album uses reverb to suck the air out of the music and create emptiness. What is more surprising is that the track still glows with an inner comfort. That comfort in emptiness is rewarded with the near-10-minute ‘Rökkva’. This is an ambient masterclass. The track has three distinct sections. It opens with a motherly caress of slow strings and yearning piano motifs, before transitioning into a flurry of modular synths. After several minutes of rising arpeggios that refuse to slow down, the track moves into its final form: a long drifting shroud of keyboards. The reverb returns, stretching chords for miles and minutes at a time, whilst piano tinkles underneath. It’s beautiful.

The electric guitar has hardly made an appearance, but with ‘Dicranum montanum’, soft country twangs noodle in a reflective, relaxed haze. It’s difficult to know where the guitar reverb ends and the atmospheric keyboard and piano ambience begins. It’s milky and luxurious, setting up the playful and chirpy ‘Heim’ to follow. ‘Heim’ is part ambient sky-drone and part dulcimer strum. It’s a track that leads the listener towards the idea of ascension without fully opening the door. That journey to a higher place, dare I say, a Higher Plain (or plane) of mental state comes with the title track.

Clocking in at over 13 minutes, ‘Boreal’ takes its time to immerse you in an angelic merger of contemporary classical music with post-rock sensibilities and structures. The drums shuffle with weight and swing. The keyboard drones create both bass and melodic layers before modular synths bleep and bloop away at rocket speed in the distance. As Seas Exhale even brings his own falsetto voice into the arrangement, merging into the organs and keyboards like another melodic synth. In truth, the title track extends into the nine-minute closer ‘Loam’, too. The same melodies and instruments slow down into a slightly tape-effected drone crawl. Night crickets set into the mix and take over, as all other instruments gently fade away.

I love how this album makes me feel like I’m next to a warm fire in a cold Arctic region. The synths are chilly. They usher in frosty winds, and often clusters and blusters of piano-like snowflakes. As Seas Exhale spends 72 minutes creating an inviting winter cabin to be lived in and loved in. ‘Boreal’ feels and sounds safe and restorative. If you enjoy the softer side of post-rock, or like your modern classical music tinkered with electronic synths and generative instrumentation, check this album out. You won’t be disappointed. ‘Boreal’ was released in February this year, and just this week, ‘Boreal II’ has been released as a follow-up. I expect more of the same to extend the cosy time at the Boreal Inn. Expect a review of the follow-up soon.

Recommended track: Rökkva

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