The Artificial Sea | ja

The Artificial Sea is a collaboration between Kevin C. Smith and Alina Simone in which her impassioned vocals and impressionistic lyrics are set to his bedroom soundscapes and melodies. Embracing a spectrum of sounds and techniques including vintage synthesizers and drum machines, obscure samples and found sound, circuit-bent creations and homemade electronics, as well as good old guitar, bass, and drums, these disparate strains are all tied together with a restrained aesthetic and fearless beauty. Recorded almost entirely at home they have rejected over-production (for aesthetic as well as practical reasons) and instead welcome any rough edges as integral to the work. The result is at once pleasing and unsettling, comforting and tense. Kevin and Alina write their parts in isolation and usually have little to no say in what the other does. Despite this isolationism (and a virtual lack of common musical touchstones) their individual contributions combine to form a cohesive, organic whole. Their first alum City Island found a home on France's excellent Travelling Music and Unwritten has just been released. .