De Oliveira, Gloria & Hurley, Dean - Oceans Of Time

The earth rotates, seasons change... there is but one long day...

Time is a beguiling, indistinct entity... sometimes standing still, sometimes bending

back upon itself with premonitions or memories of the future. Growing out of a pen

pal style correspondence that took place over the course of a year, separated by the

Atlantic Ocean, Gloria de Oliveira and Dean Hurley passed thoughts and music

back and forth that would eventually form their collaborative album, Oceans of Time.

The result is an aural tapestry of that exchange: woven from conceptual threads of the

celestial within, mortality and the realm beyond stars.

The duo's partnership is an effortless merge, yet it's the steady presence of de Oliveira's

vocals that endows the record with itssense of potency. Throughout the album, there

is an innate understanding of how a lyric across a chordal color can sharpen an emotional truth. Much like a sunbeam that pierces a spiderweb to reveal it's intricacy, her

lyric and melody are purposely aimed in order to illuminate the truths deep within

oneself... a process that ties us all to the universal. The Danish philosopher Søren

Kierkegaard, a professed influence, wrote about the truth as something that was inherently subjective, less about the concrete reality of what is believed and more about how

it is experienced by the believer.

Frequent David Lynch collaborator Dean Hurley sets the tonal and sonic landscape

of each track on the album, lending a layered ether that envelops, frames and holds

de Oliveira's vocals. With it's impressionistic synths, shimmering guitars, and ethereal

sonics, Oceans of Time at moments recalls the foundational dreampop of 4AD acts

like Cocteau Twins and Lush. The album feels especially attuned to the connections

between the physical and transcendental realms, and the best dreampop has a way of

making the veil between two worlds feel just a little bit thinner.

Oceans of Time is a key that has the power to release it's listener from the handcuffs of

reality, however briefly