Oceanic is undulating ambient minimalism floating upon dreamy and somewhat hazy eddies in a slow-moving stream of wonder. Jeff Greinke’s second album upon his return to Projekt — and 24th overall in a 40-year career — marks a departure from last year’s post-classical A Thousand Year Flood. Here, the electronic sounds are processed and often stacked to create complex textures, chords and harmonies. The timbres are distinct, formed with subtle detail, capturing the ebb and flow of emotional whirlpools surging like briny ocean turbulence within one’s heart.
“These nine compositions,” Jeff reflects, “involve abundant sonic motion with multiple layers moving from side to side, front to back, and at varying speeds and dimensions. This motion conjures large bodies of water with their long rolling waves, strong currents and cross-currents, and big slow moving tides. Hence, the album title Oceanic. That said, there’s also a prominent atmospheric aspect to this work — a common thread for me over the years — lending a mysterious and suspended quality to many of these pieces. In this way I think of more than just large bodies of water; the scenery also includes misty mountains, big clouds, steady rain, the jet stream, and far-off frozen places with massive drifting icebergs.”
“This music comes from a period of intense exploration intended to expand my musical palette through an empirical process of heavily manipulating, treating and then layering sounds. In this way, Oceanic is perhaps my most ‘experimental’ release; not in terms of genre, but in how I used the studio to push my compositions into new sonic realms. The pieces are entirely sample- and synth-based, less minimal, and don’t involve other players. The timbres are not as clear or clean; they’re more smeared and altered. This nine-month period of deeply focused creativity was an immensely exciting and fertile time of discovery for me.”
As a seasoned artist, Jeff pushed against familiar and comfortable studio work patterns by harnessing a wild abandoned approach to sculpting Oceanic. The end result is an album of music designed to draw the listener into a richly harmonic and deeply textured, somewhat strange and often beautiful, world of exploratory sound.
Released early February, 2024 on Projekt.
Track Listing:
1. Oceanic
2. Mountains to Clouds
3. Cirrus Currents
4. Cyclogenesis
5. Temple of Dripping Bells
6. Place of Discovery
7. Late Rain at the Station
8. Pressure Gradient
9. Northern Reaches
English