Ozean Album
Gaby Zenz
Founded by guitarist and composer Robin Staps at the dawn of the millennium, The Ocean immediately stood apart. Coalescing around a shared vision of limitless sonic exploration and heaviness delivered straight from the gut, the German ensemble swiftly gained a formidable reputation as standard bearers for the nebulous but unstoppable post-metal movement.
Widely hailed as their finest work to date, Phanerozoic I brimmed with moments of wide-eyed melodic gleam, alongside the expected warping and weaving of post-metal conventions. It entered the official German album charts at #41, while also scoring the band their first significant chart positions in the US, too.
The Ocean have long been known for their extensive, awe-inspiring album packaging, and their 10th album is no let-down: the Phanerozoic wooden box set included an engraved slate rock plate next to vinyl records and/or CDs of both albums, and even authentic pre-historic fossils: a trilobite from the Palaeozoic, an ammonite from the Mesozoic and a petrified fish skeleton from the Cenozoic era. The band sourced these fossils over the period of several months with the help of a geological institute in Munich, and getting the quantities needed to fulfil 1,000 box set preorders was a great challenge: hundreds of Moroccan trilobites, 450 million (!) years of age, had to be sourced from global trade fairs.
Released into a world in turmoil, Phanerozoic II will provide fans of adventurous and challenging music with all the sonic and philosophical sustenance they have come to expect from this most intuitively progressive German / Swiss / Swedish musicians collective. Despite the current pausing of all live performances, The Ocean will be twitching in the starting blocks when the madness of the global pandemic has passed; primed and ready to take their new music out on the road, where it will doubtless mutate and grow into ever more extraordinary shapes. The band have always been professional escape artists from the modern world, playing in a many far-flung locations as possible, and Staps insists that The Ocean will roll on for the foreseeable future, as mighty and inexorable as time itself.
The song begins with trip-hop beats and dark psychedelia, setting a moody and atmospheric tone. As the track progresses, intricate guitar riffs are layered over a propulsive rhythm section, building towards an unexpectedly heavy climax that serves as a fitting finale to the album.
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The album features eight tracks that use the soothing sounds of underwater life to create a deep sense of personal calm and relaxation. Beyond its power as a self-care tool, the music also fosters understanding of the majesty and fragility of the oceans and lets listeners be part of preservation efforts. Miller will donate 100% of profits from downloads of the album for the first three months to Oceanic Global.
Prior to his career in music, Miller was a film producer, cinematographer and editor in New York City. He grew up a scuba diver, eventually developing a passion for surfing, and with it, an acute awareness of the fragility of ocean life. In 2019, Miller decided to use his artistic voice to support ocean conservation, and Sounds of the Ocean was born. The project was accepted as part of the 2020 International Year of Sound, and was featured by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association in Santa Cruz, CA and debuted at Burning Man 2019. In 2021, Miller presented his work at the United Nations Climate Conference COP 26 and was featured on PBS Television, Agape Zoe Festival, World Oceans Day and as an artist in residence at MONOM Sound Berlin.
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