If music with a lyrical component tends to draw you to the artist’s intended conclusion – actually, more than that – it pushes you headlong toward the point they are trying to make; instrumental music can only gently suggest and let each listener make their own mind up about what a piece is about. You could argue that making instrumental music is the tougher path, but if you’re armed only with a title as a reference point and the most eloquent music as a guide, as we are here, if you do find your way to the artist’s intended destination, then that is something masterful to behold.
And at only 16, Alexander Laing’s ability to conjure those titular oceans is impressive. The ebbs and flows of strings, the pelagic vista that paints the horizon, the pianos rising and falling with each crash of the wave, the whole a majestic sonic seascape that evolves and moves before us both in gentle, distant terms and as vivid, white-flecked explosions before our eyes.
Taken from his album, The Delta Wave, this is one of 12 meditative instrumental pieces that explore the nature of sleep and dreaming, and the unconscious state that lies beyond our wakened experiences. And if the vast ocean isn’t the perfect metaphor for such a deep and largely unexplored state of being, and the album, in general, isn’t a brilliant soundtrack for that faraway somewhere, then I don’t know what is.
