Between 400 and 600 million years ago, a period marked by the evolutionary emergence of both sharks and trees, an ocean stretched between unrecognizable continents. Iapetus, named for the Titan father of Atlas, would be the precursor to the Atlantic Ocean, but so far removed from our current era it may as well have been an alien planet.
For experimental electronic musician John Kennedy, it’s a wonderfully suitable title for his richly ambient debut album. Iapetus represents a journey through foreign territory using familiar elements but arranged for a hauntingly esoteric landscape. It represents a beginning.
Iapetus may be John Kennedy’s debut album, but he can hardly be seen as a fledgling musician. This is a master at work. He’s previously composed for the Port Hawkesbury Pirate Day Festival, been a CBC Searchlight finalist, participated in the Icelandic Artist in Residence Program, as well as recorded with several Nova Scotia artists.
“Iapetus,” says Kennedy, “is about transitions, from oceans to mountains and back.”
This is apparent in the largely electronic songs, there is a pulse…a forward movement. Within each song, you are treated to a complete vision, one tectonic shift. As the album continues, all the songs gain a greater purpose supporting the overall theme. You are left somewhere very far from where you began. Somewhere far from when the Iapetus sea covered this area millions of years ago.
“I grew up surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean with the rocks of an ancient seabed beneath my feet. There is a tangible connection to those rocks of ancient seabed, they hold the iron of a Precambrian red ocean, iron atoms that were once attached to the oxygen we breathe. These mountains had a large influence on me, and this is a series of compositions about the ocean that stood upon them a long time before I did.
“The Iapetus Ocean preceded the Atlantic Ocean before the continents came together, then apart again. Named after the Titan in Greek mythology who is held to be an ancestor of humanity, Iapetus brings to mind not only earth origins but the cycles at the heart of nature – from those in geologic time to the continuous cycle of water through its various forms on earth. As in any cycle, there is a return to the point of beginning — our Iapetus.”
On the album’s second track, “Organic,” we hear soft sounds floating behind a propulsive, arpeggiated synthesizer, and it brings visions of time-lapsed clouds moving over a slow-motion beach, giving us a sense of the immense amount of time these songs are conveying.
Kennedy has more tricks up his sleeve as we move through the album; from the organic, upright piano that brings in “The Silence”, to the harder edge of “The Flood”, with its brooding, industrial tones.
Instrumental albums can be a challenge in this age of rapid-fire, disposable pop, but Iapetus has put the energy in the right spots. There is evolution via morphing textures, smart melodic progression, and rhythmic work that keeps you waiting for the next move.
As the album reaches its conclusion with “Sounds of a Lost Sea”—the strongest reference to the album’s title—we are treated to an experimental delight. Radio waves wash over our ears like waves, and we can hear the wind whistling across the ever-changing landscape.
As the final sounds fade away, I am left with the sensation of more to come…another sea in another time, or at least another wonderful album from John Kennedy.