Selkie by Animated Matter

Composer and vocalist Hannah Elizabeth Cox and multisensory artist David Yann Robert pair up on their first release as Animated Matter. Their eight track debut interprets the Scandinavian, Scottish and Celtic myth of the Selkie: a tragedy of impossible land/sea romance between a man and a shapeshifting seal/woman.

Textures of harmonic sludge slowly surface like artifacts from a deep water archeological dig into the mantle of our common, ancestral past. Tonal currents serve equally as a soundtrack for a dark, late night walk on a remote and isolated shore or listening to the silver threads of the moon bristling on the threshold of awareness.

At times, the tracks pull the listener from several fathoms deep up to the surface of the sea and beyond as if dematerializing into sonic grains of salted mist. Animated transitions between phases of matter are delicately eased by warm, dripping Rhodes chords that feel like finding safe harbor after a storm. As the album progresses, intimate, pre-linguistic vocalizations gently reveal the Selkie’s hauntingly beautiful song. Two-thirds into the album, she seems to have shifted into human form and words are nearly discernible but only for a brief, almost dry moment on land.

During the closing of the work, Selkie’s unhurried descent back to her natural, submerged state reminds us of the inevitable illusion of self-consistency and the importance of capitulating to the motions of change. This album invites the listener’s thoughts to lie down and surrender to the hidden natural forces that shape all earthkind. Horizontal listening encouraged.

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