(((O))) : Ben Seretan & John Thayer – Sunbeam of No Illusion

The number of recordings that combine electronics with acoustic instruments and sounds picked up in the field (whatever that field might be) is proliferating by the day. Yet, as it could be expected, it is always a hit and miss affair, often depending on the ability of the artists involved to make a musical combination that actually works in a manner that all those sounds involved create the result all involved are set to create and something that listeners can actually relate to.

The combination of Ben Seretan & John Thayer goes for such a concept on the duo’s joint offering Sunbeam of No Illusion in an attempt to reverse the concept described as “machine in the garden,” something attributed to American Transcendentalists, a 19th-century New England intellectual and poet movement that included the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman. Seretan’s and Thayer’s reversal, according to their PR, would be – garden in the machine – using “the Fender Rhodes piano to create atmospheric, looped soundscapes inspired by the natural environment of upstate New York. The music blends organic pastoral themes with digital artefacts, incorporating intentional noise and glitches to simulate the sounds of the physical world.”

On paper (or screen), it all just might sound a bit too complex and hard to execute, too conceptual, if you will, yet through 11 compositions here, the duo manages to bring in that natural element into “the machine,” creating some free-flowing, breezy soundscapes, where even the sounds of a passing train sound like an embellishment thad doesn’t distract, but complements the soundscape or musical painting Seretan & Thayer set out to create.

Seretan & Thayer were able to make a seemingly complicated concept sound as easy and natural as their “machine in the garden” should sound. Their sunbeam sounds quite natural indeed.