After many months composing — during 2020’s unusual time — Boris Salchow produced Remembering the Sea. His new album on Puremagnetik Tapes wields the emotional complexity of music to create a sound world of memory, calm, frustration and hope.

Remembering The Sea pulses in slow waves that surround the listener, gestures that start in the distance but detonate out of the speakers with various levels of force, from a sigh to an explosion. At times, pulse forms into beats, moving with measured determination. And as the title hints, the music is never far from the natural world, nor waves themselves.

“I am lucky enough to be surrounded by trees and birds. I began deep listening to nature, then recording it and then ultimately sitting down at the piano—with the doors open—composing with nature.” That’s “Will,” with its opening piano phrases accompanied by chirping birds, a cello morphing into a sinuous buzz that could be bees in a garden.

For Salchow, like many millions, the world has collapsed into an interior space of home, of screens, of mind. His description of his experience is evocative: “It was like time froze and we started teleporting to friends and family via video, as if keeping secret from an alien force that expects us to not physically leave our houses.” Inside all this, Salchow started making music.

The surprise is that Remembering The Sea is so expansive, not only sonically but in the way it reaches into common memories and connects to experiences across time and space. The opening track, “Curfew,” may be about isolation, but the sweep of warm, buzzing pads, the rising pitches, and the distant pounding of drums evokes the distant thunder similar to the opening of Blade Runner. The movie’s LA setting is not too dystopian that there can’t be hope, and Salchow’s haunting album never leaves hope behind.

All tracks produced and composed by Boris Salchow
Mixed by Jonathan Feurich
Mastered by Taylor Deupree
Artwork by John Whitlock