Reflections is the spiritual successor to Somnambulate in many ways. Part of the same period of recording sessions, the seven tracks from Reflections move into more experimentation with long form, amorphous ambient soundscapes along with moments of percussion and sparse rhythms. This is the fifth album for The Corrupting Sea and is the second full-length for 2018. There is a spiritual center to these particularly bright tracks but they still contain the tension The Corrupting Sea tends to infuse into his art.
The cassette comes with an 8 panel J Card displaying the wonderfully beautiful photography of Garett Wood. There are only 50 cassettes made. At checkout, fans have a choice between green or blue cassette shells (25/25) and when they are gone, they will not be reprinted, at least in the near future and never in this current form (never say never, as they say).
Thanks to: Zylophonica, Paul Saarnak, Garett Wood, Toby Bernsand, Frank Lenz, Deborah Scharpff Sexton, Jon Attwood, Tam Laird, Rick Reed, Matthew Hanner, Aaris King, Jeff Ryan, Derek Rogers, Brian John Mitchell, Aaron Snow, Amber Crain, Shelly Pruitt-Johnson, Mark Barton, John Dufilho, Cody McPhail, Trish Connelly, Preston Maddox, Jake McCown, Jacques Urioste, Jim Branstetter, Rick Reed, Melissa Seely, Greg Wilson, Rebekah Williamson, Chris Williamson, Jay Francis, Damien Duque, David Lignon, Nico Beatastic, Daniel Land, Josh Richardson and all who have bought merch, shown up at a gig, listened to demos, or just encouraged me.
Special Thanks to my children Dakota and Andrea, my partner Tami, and my parents Gary and Vickie for all the support and encouragement. It means the world!
"The Corrupting Sea (Jason T. Lamoreaux) has only been releasing ambient music for a couple of years, but has already put out a handful of tapes on his own Texan imprint. It starts with a reverie of percussion layered with slightly twangy synths on Triumph. Mostly what I imagine a preamble in its declarative repetition, it sort of revs your senses for the unfolding The Phoenix. The recording has the allure of various instrumental incidental interludes of conceptual, latter day Blancmange records. It’s on the far flung outer edge of pop. The paced timing, and synth streaming are stylish and clean. On Lights we are treated to our first glimpse of something in the realm of an inside-out sci-fi soundtrack, stripped of earthiness, fueled by galactic melody. The vibe seems to be in reverse, mimicking the trajectory of the dew globules in Garett Wood‘s macro images that don the multi-fold cover art. It’s a place of wonder, a reduced galaxy where the stars hover effortlessly, in time and in space.
This sound flows into the tape’s centerpiece, the seventeen minute opus Flooded Gnosis. With soft ghostly drones and measured keystrokes a wind twists through this lethargic theme. Layered as if it were careening though a wormhole, the discarded bits flare to the edges, and the bare-bones craft dispatches us into a soft-spoken chordal journey. Most of what you hear afterward, on Calm and Uninterrupted Solipsis is mostly quite low-key and meditative, but not without a certain lingering tension in the air, something that is just above/below the cellular surface at all times. For instance, at one moment on the latter track, a sustained plume of steam is suddenly released as tiny keytones unveil the mysteries beyond a hinted music box. After a while it morphs via the minds eye, like a waterfall or rushing river.
In the end Swell materializes and, well, in fact tangibly swells with a slightly sinister and sensitive synth signature. There’s noise and melody playing on separate, dual tracks, mirroring each other in their differences, never quite meeting in the middle, yet forming a sense of communion, of distant harmony. It’s a drone pulse that docks in place and reverberates into the cosmic ether. The track ties together the light and dark sides of Reflections, a tape worthy of pressing replay."
~ TJ Norris / Tone Shift
toneshift.net/2018/07/15/reflections-by-the-corrupting-sea/