On Sea-Faring Isolation

 

European Election 2024.

& Sunday Service. Today with Lieven Martens Moana.

It's been about 10 years since I discovered Lieven Martens' music.

At a time when the climax of his project Dolphins into the Future had been reached and all the concerts had already been played. The band had packed up and moved on, you could say. Of course this is nonsense for a laptop based project. Afterwards he continued to make music and sounds under the many of his pseudonyms, but without achieving the presence of the dolphins for me.

Hmmm. I can't even properly express what this music meant to me and what it triggered in me and how important it has become to me since then. That was just something completely new. In addition to well-produced music, with crystal-clear sound, with well-balanced highs and lows (albeit more lows), I've always had a soft spot for lo-fi sound ala Lou Barlow's Sentridoh or the early Folk 'Implosion.

This was somehow lo-fi, electronic, and yet completely deep and took me away to far-flung atolls and deep rainforests. Together with the oceanic meditations of Wave Temples, Hybrid Palms, Vladimir Karpow's X.Y.R., Fluorescent Heights, Magnetophonique, Les Halles, Monte, Komodo Haunts and so on, I found myself in a completely new musical world. When you hear the word Lo-Fi, many people will probably wave you off, but perhaps this term doesn't do this music justice, just as many terms tend to lead nowhere. I felt comfortable here, but it was difficult for me to get out of the water or leave the tropical rainforests again.

“…on Sea-Faring Isolation” was released in 2009 by Britt Brown’s Great Not Not Fun & is Lieven Martens masterpiece for me and contains two killer tracks, “Lone Voyager” & “Memory of Self”, which always really get me and which are always played on repeat. Time for a new experience? Let's go!

Dolphins Into The Future 

„... On Sea-Faring Isolation"

On The High Seas (06'43")

Lone Voyager (08'36")

Onset ~ Beyond Clouds (02'34") *

Memory Of Self (07'05) **

Lapse ~ Dream (05'40")

Aftermath ~ Isle Of Self (05'21")

All sounds and music by L.R.J. Martens.

Recorded in isolation by automatic writing at the Cetacean Nation Studios, Nowemapa ~ Kekemapa 2008.

•   Outtake from a radio play, aired Inuali 2008 during the programme Tyfustijd on Radio Centraal.
• * Originally created for Bolderplaats, a theatre play written and performed by Wietske Van Gils.

This long playing record was originally created as a tribute to the Seafaring Isolation writings of Cetacean Nation founder John Cunningham Lilly M.D., in which he describes the case of lone ocean dwellers past - future ~ present. What happens when an isolated mind roams around the oceanic world by itself, only surrounded by this vast system of overwhelming natural elements? Its ego-entity lodged in a non-human framework. Its human biocomputer committed to process all the ones and zeros in the framework of a giant Seven Waves Octave four-dimensional isolation tank.

At Gaia's Pond, the Oceanic Octave is the only comprehendible code-system up in the ether. All reproduced input digits energise through ocean, through sky, through sun, through wind, through clouds, through rain, through various ocean inhabitants. Thus creating myths through these elements. Everything is, coloured by strict human solitude, writing a new script. Your Dreamtime in this realm is one that radiates by a nonhuman current. Pushing your mind to create a whole different story. A creative ego puzzle with its new truth and reality. An ecstatic truth which could be frightening couid be bliss. A hallucination which might be closer to reality than our own waking-sleep visions of the specific "now".

This Dreamtime of solitude, is the myth of the Seven Waves Octave.

This album is a linear story.

Revealing the Dreamtime from its departure.

Materialising the onset ~ lapse ~ aftermath of the actual thought (de)construction.

As being the aural registration of an alien myth conceived by a human source and consciousness, filtered through the Seven Waves Octave.

As being an evocation of the ocean that is your yetzer ha-_ov, your lover, your mother, your god, your center.

AH! AH! AH!

This is a Cetacean Nation Communication, Nowemapa 2010.

Produced by Not Not Fun Records, Los Angeles, USA. This is a second edition of 300 copies.

Vinyl label drawing by Jessie Schietecatte.

„Timely digital reissue of Dolphins Into The Future's sublime 2009 NNF release. The man also known as Cetacean Nation Institute For Environmental Sounds, Wildlife Tapes Portal Jams, or Lieven Martens to his friends, pillow dives into a semi-conscious ocean of improvised New Age loops, field recordings and pitch-refracted, Riley-esque synthline wanderings, webbed-fingers navigating the way across the keys. Like a saltier Monopoly Star Child Searcher or JD Emmanuel shored on a pacific desert island 'On Sea-Faring Isolation' plays through nonstop with a delightful mystery and dawning narrative with a quiet, serene contentment and enough humour to keep it buoyant. Highly recommended." (Boomkat)

"Returning to the shore returns us to the sure, allowing us to fit this Dolphins Into The Future release into a sonic context that includes Oneohtrix Point Never, Emeralds (and in particular John Elliott’s Imaginary Softwoods project), Brian Eno (connections nautical and ambient), and the nature recordings of Chris Watson. Martens’ work exists in a world that has all these in it, but it sets itself apart with its insistence on the possibility of “cetacean trance” and its commitment to the life aquatic. Well worth a lengthy immersion." (Tiny Mix Tapes)