Ageless Sea, by Samn Johnson

Ageless Sea

by Samn Johnson

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1.	Across the Waves 05:07	buy track
2.	Waxing Beams 05:57	buy track
3.	Cædmon's Hymn 07:16	buy track
4.	Blooms of the Field 03:35	buy track
5.	Atta Unsar 05:56	buy track
6.	Empty Spirals 09:57	buy track
7.	Out from the Waves 18:18	buy track

about

Ageless Sea is an album of music composed and recorded in 2013-16, combining electronics and rock instruments with chamber choir and orchestra. Its world is built on musical time travel and the dissolution of boundaries between eras, creating an imaginary and mysterious environment where unexpected combinations arise and dissipate against the background of a deep, layered well of time.

The vocal pieces are settings of texts in a variety of Old Germanic languages: Proto-Germanic, Gothic, Old English, and Old Norse.

Here are some phrases and words that relate to the record:

ocean - time travel - layers - memory - creaking machine - fantasy - impossible concurrence of vastly separate moments - language (the substance of thought) is slippery: given time, understanding fades - familiar but strange - “always the same, but never in the same way” - “new meets old”, but there isn’t one old; here is Mahler and here is Machaut, but then there is geology - the new is already slipping below the surface. The old isn’t there to be venerated, it’s a memento mori - new meets old because new becomes old - it’s a circle, but it’s an arrow.

credits

released March 11, 2022

All music composed and arranged by Samn Johnson.

Samn Johnson: electronics, celesta, piano, harmonium, wurlitzer, guitar, bass.

Nora Burgard: soprano
Tessa Patterson: soprano
Rachel McIntosh: alto
Ashley Mulcahy: alto
Jonathan King: tenor
Glenn Healy: bass
Joshua Boyd, choral conducting

Evan Laybourn: drums
Nathan Mondry: harpsichord
Daniel Goldblum: bassoon
Mikaela Davis: harp

Davis West: Violin
Teagan Faran: Violin
Emma Dansak: Viola
Victor Huls: Cello

Nick Castellano: Horn
Jeff Garcia: Trumpet
Alison Roberts: Trombone
Robert Kaliati: Tuba

Choir, drums, bass, strings, brass, and wurli engineered by Rishi Daftuar at Back Seat Studio, Ann Arbor, MI

Guitar engineered by Joe Lucas at Double Phelix studios, Kalamazoo, MI.

Harspichord recording engineered by Samn Johnson at McGill University.
Bowed vibraphone samples performed by Gloria Yehilevsky

All other recording and sampling by Samn Johnson

Mixed by Samn Johnson
Mastered by Rishi Daftuar

The pronunciation of these texts can be reconstructed by the comparative method of historical linguistics. The publications I used to inform my pronunciation guides, and compose my own poetic text in the reconstructed Proto-Germanic language are as follows. With the benefit of hindsight, I am aware of several errors, which are my own, and not the fault of these sources.

Thomas Lambdin, An Introduction to the Gothic Langauge, 2006
Thomas Moore and Samuel Knott, The Elements of Old English
Richard M. Hogg, A Grammar of Old English
Guus Kroonen, An Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic
Hermann Hirt, Handbuch des Urgermanischen
Donald Ringe, From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic, 2006

license

about

Samn Johnson Kalamazoo, Michigan

Samn Johnson is a composer and producer, working in an eclectic style integrating ethereal electronics with contemporary classical composition and historical languages and music. He currently lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

discography

Ageless Sea

Mar 2022
Consolation (EP 1)

Aug 2021
Epistulae

Jun 2021
it comes in waves

Sep 2020
wie ein Nebel...

Apr 2020
Epistulae Hiemales

Apr 2013
Variations

May 2012
Shades

Apr 2011

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