Altered Zones

By Ric Leichtung

In 1979, German oceanographer Jürgen Müller built a music studio on his houseboat. While he had been fascinated by the water since childhood, Müller hadn't felt it as a muse until he conducted research on the North Sea. Inspired by "the mystery and romance of the great seas," Müller borrowed synths from friends and put his limited keyboard skills to work. You won't find the kind of suspense-inducing chords, creeping chromaticism, or startling keyboard attacks that you'd expect to hear on "Shark Week"; Müller has neither the ear nor the musical know-how to pull off a production that calculated. The sonic delights to be uncovered on Science are in the impressionistic ripples of its layered pads and and echoing arpeggios. "Sea Green" and "Coral Fantasy" yield breathtaking underwater landscapes that evoke an abstract sense of spirituality, and it's fragments of deep sea serenity like these that make Science of the Sea a valuable relic from a then-nascent new age culture.

Science thrives on simplicity, but given its delicate balance between linear harmonic structures and unfurling textural variation, Müller's lack of training is impressive-- especially on meatier cuts like "Beyond The Tide" and "Sea Green." Thematically, there are pieces that really speak to one another-- "Dream Sequence for Jellyfish" and "The Elusive Seahorse," "Sea Green" and "Sea Bed Meditation"-- but some follow an all-too-similar path, content to revolve around a single arpeggio. "Waterworld" and "Marine Technology" are flashy enough to hook listeners in, but lack a climactic compositional arc. It's true: Müller's sound pallette can feel a little repetative, but in their vividly emotive textures, even the album's sleepers shimmer with their own charm. Had the less-than-three-minute lifespans of tracks like "Chasing Submarines" or "The Lonely Voyage" been extended and more developed, the album could have been truly legendary. But then again, the music isn't what solely defines Science of the Sea.

What makes this album a truly captivating listen is its story-- one of a 30-year-old scientist with no musical know-how who was touched by nature's profound beauty. And even more hypnotizing, originally less than 100 copies of the album were pressed. Half of those were given to Müller's friends and collegues in the oceanic field who probably didn't know kosmische from kraut (losers!). That said, the album is suspiciously crafted with waxidermists in mind-- almost too sensational to be true. Nearly thirty years after Science's release, it's a wonder that the music found its way to Digitalis Recordings via Foxy D writer Jan-Arne Sohns, who was shown the album by a member of Müller's extended family, who allegedly told Sohns in broken English that the album sounded like, "music like that weird stuff you like!" Skeptics have to wonder whether or not its origins are too good to be true. Wild claims can be made about the album's authenticity-- one being that Müller's studio locale shares the same name as Foxy founder Brad Rose's main music project (hm). The album's fishy background leads to some interesting questions about the power of the press release and the common record collector's obsession with obscurity, but casting half-baked conspiracy theories aside, Science's serves as an earwitness account of a non-artist's creative and spiritual awakening. On a grander scale, the album unwittingly mirrored the sounds of a brewing movement, and now that new age has been declared on the rise, this album couldn't have come at a better time than now.

Jürgen Müller: Science of the Sea

The Science of the Sea LP is sold out, but you can download the whole album from Digitalis Recordings' Bandcamp