Sam Dunscombe, Two Forests / Oceanic, Australia, Black Truffle Records, BT111 vinyl LP (2023)
TSP readers may recall that the last time we came across Sam Dunscombe, which was over two years ago, they had recorded an album inspired by their discovery of some tangled old tape impaled on a lonely cactus in California’s Mojave Desert. Their new opus “Two Forests / Oceanic” – not necessarily following on directly from that album (“Outside Ludlow / Desert Disco”) – is based on work they have been doing on the role music can play in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (the use of psychedelic drugs in treating mental illnesses). Using field recordings of forest noise ambience and of waves rising and ebbing on beach shores respectively, along with analysing the pitches of the original recordings to generate new sets of pitches based on Just Intonation and then weaving them into the original works, or combining several field recordings into one set, Dunscombe creates two long compositions that can serve as therapeutic tools to aid in treating patients. I’m assuming therapists are free to use these compositions as they see fit, that the music can be used as an active tool by both therapists and patients in treatment, and not simply as a pleasant soundtrack playing in the background.
“Two Forests” begins pleasantly enough in a California forest with birdsong and insect noises dominant, from which listeners can discern rhythms appearing that may hold potential as structuring elements for the entire track. As the track continues, you can sense something growing from within the background ambience behind the bird twitter and insect chitter. Sure enough, a dense quivering drone develops that captures your attention and invites you to draw closer to it, at the same receding so that you need to concentrate on it further. You start to forget all the birds and other animal sounds that introduced you to this forest. You eventually find yourself in a vast space when you realise these other sounds are fading away, save for a new repeating, gentle clack-clack motif. It turns out we are now deep in the rainforest near Manaus, in Brazil. In the space of a few moments, we have actually crossed vast distances of time and space through a time-travel portal.
“Oceanic” can be quite a stupendous work of surging ocean waves, swelling and crashing into one another, while a quiet metallic drone putters away through this soundtrack, seemingly unfazed and unaffected. I confess, the first time I heard this track, I started feeling a bit seasick halfway through! It does sound as though the waves are becoming stronger and choppier, and you half-expect the huge swell to come crashing down on your head and the freezing wind to blow into your face. You might even expect to hear the bleating noises of seabirds riding the wind on their migrations. The best moments of the track (and perhaps of the entire recording) come after the tenth minute when sharp waves of pointillist tone fly across the space, and you can almost feel yourself being pulled back and forth, and even thrown about.
Relying entirely or almost entirely on the forest and beach field recordings as sound sources, and constructing soundscapes faithful to the source material, Dunscombe ends up creating astonishingly expansive and hypnotic works that really do open up the mind to worlds and visions that would otherwise remain hidden. “Oceanic” especially is a very dynamic piece that invites the listener to be an active participant in becoming immersed in a world that exists in the main through action, rather than as a static sound or drone track. A very remarkable achievement.