With Ocean Jon Hood offer their listeners a hauntingly beautiful sign of their sonic and visual existence after the release of their acclaimed debut album Body Semantics in 2017. Like the band itself the composition of Ocean went through diverse states of moods and shapes in the past years, with this current variation feeling like a very vivid and carefully narrated entity.
The composition follows repetitive instrumental loops that are constantly expanding, making the song grow like a gorgeous mushroom. When the warmly spoken lyrics of vocalist Joan Seiler evolve into hymn-like singing one can feel sparks of gentle excitement, the atmosphere turning from a calm melancholy into a somewhat hopeful euphoria – a dynamic that many Jon Hood songs carry. The backing echoes by Sonya Carmona, a Costa Rican musician, underline this emotional picture.
I can hear the ocean in your name, the beginning line of the song is a gentle reminder that although the world feels mechanical and alienated at times, there is still room for fantasy and synesthetic experiences. This idea is also mirrored in the music video by Eliane Bertschi, where performer Lara Dâmaso moves between a green screen studio and diverse animated fantasy worlds created by Joerg Hurschler. With the power of imagination a virtual reality can become the inner safe space and vice versa. So called glitches in the patriarchally structured world can become superpowers within the virtual.
Carefully written by Dominika Jarotta
