I Heart Lung, the drums-and-guitar duo from Southern California, are breaking through a barrier with Interoceans, connecting to a jazz-past that their earlier recordings only hinted at. It has a meditative quality similar to some spiritually-oriented jazz records from the ’60s and early-’70s by artists like Yusef Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, and especially Alice Coltrane. Unlike modal jazz or Indian raga, these jazz records don’t sound like consciously engineered amalgamations of musical ideas; they sound like a place where those ideas hypnotically mingle. While Interoceans is thinner and more brittle than, say, A Monastic Trio or Journey in Satchidananda, it's similarly unassuming in its eclecticism.
And it's just as deep, too. To listen closely to Coltrane's Impulse! records is to be submerged deep beneath waves of sound; to listen to Interoceans afterwards would be like drowning if it weren't for the open possibility and freedom the music signifies. The inclusion of guests like Nels Cline on guitar and Dave Easley on pedal steel only help in this regard, evoking a sense of free-collaboration and open-ended-ness. I had never before heard a pedal steel part like Easley's on "Interoceans II (Overturning)," but it sounded so seamless upon my first listen I hardly noticed my preconceptions about the instrument's essential nature and function being teased apart.
The album is divided into four movements, each based on a different underlying drone onto which the other elements are superimposed. It's a minimalist underpinning with layers of busyness grafted on top. The elements of these pieces are constantly being shuffled around, arranged and rearranged. They never settle on any one combination of textures for long, vacillating between deep, black pits and glistening, snow-capped mountaintops. It's a 44-minute series of lonesome, meditative musical events curled up inside the eternal, pulsating drone-cocoon.
With Interoceans, I Heart Lung have created a watery repository for sounds, instruments, and ideas from across a broad intellectual and musical spectrum. They conjure a soundworld both loose and cohesive, a sonic unity forged in sincerity and commitment. This compelling of music isn't easy to come by nowadays.