Hammock - Universalis, album review

I Hear Whales Singing

Hammock – Nashville duo Marc Byrd and Andrew Thompson – present an ambient swathe on this album that bulges with serenity, a bit like a heavy frame that still sprawls full and gently content in an arc of the strung seat of this band’s name.

There, I’m not the first nor last I suspect to get that metaphor into a review, but it does beg for one. In many ways too, this says it all. I am no expert on the mechanisms of producing these beautiful sounds, but beautiful they are, and the prominent instrumentation is the effects of strings that billow in and out of many tracks, atmospherically across atmospheric titles like Universalis, Cliffside, We Are More Than We Are [this with guitar and a percussive slow beat], Tether of Yearning and Clothed with Sky.

Each builds and it is this endeavour to move and rise that prevails. It is essentially an emotive listen, and a soothing one. For Tether of Yearning, I imagine whales singing. It is as personally imaginary as this. Clothed with Sky is its symphonic pass-by.