Eric Holm - Surface Variations (2020)

Endlessly reverberating subaquatic sound designs from Eric Holm, inspired by and richly evoking his time spent working as an industrial diver in the Artic.

“Eric Holm's new album reflects on his time spent underwater in the face of a growingly precarious personal, ecological and political landscape. A series of field recordings captured both above and below the surface are reformed into a sonic palette. Via oceanic sounds and rhythms taken from mechanical diving apparatuses, Surface Variations meditates on the connectivities and dissonances between humanity and nature.

Submerged within a marine panorama, the material frames the interplays of darkness and light — the contrasting of lively ecosystems and vast emptiness — contemplating the bloodlike essence of the planet and the eternal mysteries the oceans harbour. The compositions draw on Holm’s time as an industrial diver, reflecting on ongoing desires to conquer this untameable domain, and a deeper humility in comprehending the limits and fragility of humans in the face of the unstoppable forces of nature.

Perceiving the ocean itself as both a teacher and a mirror, the music emerges as meditations on the human condition, seeking to imagine through the silence and solitude of water the possibility of alternative currents for life above ground. Drifting alone, the sea becomes a timeless space for contemplation, a place to dream of new futures whilst reconciling the flotsam of the past.

Eric Holm in a UK based, America born sound artist and composer. His first LP Andøya (2014) was made from contact mic recordings of pylons carrying communications cables that connected listening stations on an Arctic Norwegian island. Eric's second LP Barotrauma (2016) was recorded underwater while training to be an industrial diver.”