Seahawks – Paradise Freaks (2014) Lossless

British production duo Jon Tye and Pete Fowler, who mostly traffic in near-future cosmic shoe-gaze genre, or deck shoe-gaze, or yacht-rock (as they like to call it) open up their new album Paradise Freaks with the track ‘Rainbow Sun’. This really only tells us one thing – Seahawks‘ amoebic sun-speckled concoctions, that have in the past formed a decidedly psychedelic cocoon, now crack open, permeating an air of subdued defiance that beg for us to escape, switch off and click into their astral grid.
As if handed a pre-booked ticket to watch a cast of guest vocalists; The Charlatan’s Tim Burgess, Estonian Maria Minerva, Peaking Lights’ Indra Dunis, Nick Nicely and The Horrors Tom Furse, all collaborating on what seems to feel like a giant roaming space ship beaming shards of agile talent – heck, you’re instantly positioned in a comfortable velvet cinema chair on a tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. Down in the orchestra pit sits Al Doyle (Hot Chip/LCD Soundsystem) on bass, Rob Smoughton (Hot Chip/Grovesnor) on drums and guitar, and Kenny Dickenson (KT Tunstall/Red Ken) on keys. The only difference is that these cinema seats have a buckle, because things will no doubt feel preternatural.

The key is Tim Burgess from The Charlatans offering up vocals on ‘Look at the Sun’ and Indra Dunis on ‘Drifting’. Both keep the platitudes from sounding stale by granting a bridge from that electro opener. Burgess almost drags the album from the dance floor to the quiet bedroom and Dunis’ dreamy vocals drip florescent trails of sedated sultry-coos. The production in particular feels slight, but necessarily so – to over-dub may have meant to shift the spotlight off of her, something Seahawks were adamant on keeping in focus.

The band are known for their overt love of the ocean and here, it bobs like a buoy marking its territory with track titles like ‘Moon Turn Tides’, ‘Islands’ and ‘Safe Harbor’. But, it’s ‘Safe Harbor’ and ‘Sky is You’ that stand out licked by an undercoat of Broken Social Scene’s Feel Good Lost and Jürgen Müller’s Science Of The Sea. The similarities aren’t a deterrent, for me they’re a triumph and of course comparing them to anyone may seem unkind, but if anything it shows us how a collaborative cast like this can create ambient music that’s able to grab hold of you whilst you’re orbiting around and demand attention. With discordant trip-hop blues breakdowns, the songs are so cool and sharp that they feel untouched by a human hand, and when the overdub of vocals make an appearance, they’re just lamenting words that neither pierce nor puncture – but rather jump aboard and melt into the song’s floating habitat.

Paradise Freaks is balanced rather well, however, with various embellishments which help break the occasional foggy mist, like stripped down ’70s funk guitars and haunting horns. ‘Electric Waterfalls’ works once you pop on those rose-tinted glasses because you feel as though Nick Nicely were literally standing at the bottom of a transcendental mountain, with a waterfall running a rainbow of colours behind him. The end scene ‘Islands’ depicts the sounds one would hear whilst lounging below a canopy of tropical trees – together with flutes, running streams and bird-calls it makes it easy for us to see the opening track ‘Rainbow Sun’ as a vehicle that launched us into the air and ‘Islands’ as the ground you find yourself laying down on at the end of the journey.