From the mystic power of a sound bath to the biological comfort of a cat’s purr, humans have long recognized that sound affects the entire body. The late composer Pauline Oliveros called it deep listening: a practice in which listeners to engage with sound by surrendering to it completely. Among her students were Oakland’s Chuck Johnson and Marielle Jakobsons. Johnson issued Balsams, an ambient pedal-steel album inspired by his own deep-listening practices, in 2017; Jakobsons co-founded California instrumental duo Date Palms, whose 2013 album The Dusted Sessions was a masterwork of hazy desert psychedelia. As Saariselka, the pair create rippling soundscapes as soothing and engulfing as a warm bath.
Though the duo’s stated intention for The Ground Our Sky was to encourage a return to the earth, Jakobson’s sparkly keys and Johnson’s honeyed pedal steel sound as though they’re meeting in mid-air. From shared low-end foundations, they gently peel off and curve around one another. “Horizons” opens the album on a bed of fuzzy keys and synths, gradually stretching outward as Johnson’s steel-string tendrils curl around Jakobsons’ melody. Johnson carries the beginning of “Into the Wind” with a three-note repetition that rolls with the asymmetry of an unhurried tumbleweed. Jakobsons’ voice arrives somewhere between a hum and a whisper, fluttering like a transmission from beyond.
In the modern era, “frictionless” is often a euphemism for wringing humanity out of everyday interactions—an autoplay function instead of a live DJ, or an online food order instead of a phone call with a stranger. But Jakobsons and Johnson use their lithe maneuvers to build a space that feels restorative. Their compositions are without both friction and the uncanny-valley gloss that can accompany its absence.
Saariselka’s most gorgeous composition is the resonant “Neochrome,” which best demonstrates how Johnson and Jakobsons mutually amplify each other’s talents. Jakobsons initiates the piece with the cool vibrance of a Rhodes keyboard, and the song builds slowly from there, overlapping layers appearing and dissolving seamlessly. Their tonal kinship sometimes makes it difficult to find where her contributions end and his begin. “Neochrome” stretches for nearly eight minutes, and yet it fades too fast.
Saariselka’s entry into the canon of music geared toward deep listening is modest, barely eclipsing the 40-minute mark. But their careful pace and refusal to succumb to instant gratification is a tonic against chaos, a reminder that otherworldly idylls exist within terrestrial grasp. The Ground Our Sky encourages sensuality in the most literal sense: an awareness of one’s senses and taking deliberate pleasure in them.
Buy: Rough Trade
