The Seas Trees See is
Dntel's first release on
Morr Music, which is a bit surprising, given the project's longtime connection with flagship act
Lali Puna and the indie electronic genre as a whole. It features more vocals than the alien abstractions of 2018's
Hate in My Heart and the vivid techno and footwork mutations of 2014's
Human Voice, but producer
Jimmy Tamborello doesn't attempt to revisit the more accessible, crossover-friendly style of his work during the 2000s, when he had a brush with mainstream success as part of
the Postal Service. Like
Hate in My Heart, the album is intentionally stripped down and abstract, with
Tamborello limiting the equipment used on each track rather than going for an intricate, expansive sound. The record opens with a cover of folk singer
Kate Wolf's "The Lilac and the Apple," which is nearly a cappella, but with the vocals cloaked in fizzling distortion and vinyl crackle. Much of the album revels in nature imagery, like the moon pool reflections of "The Seas" and "The Man on the Mountain," a spoken tale about a hiker's encounter with a wise man. The grainy, glitchy guitars and buried beats of "Back Home" recall
Bibio's pastoral folktronica, and other tracks like the sly, noisy "Yoga App" take things closer to the haunted realm of the
Ghost Box label. "Fall in Love" is a moody downtempo ballad with fragile, detached loops and filtered singing similar to the opening track, and "Hard Weather" similarly contains spliced, pitch-altered vocals along with slowly paced, fuzzy textures, with gamelan-like percussive tones emerging during the second half. Countering all of this is the aptly titled "Whimsy," a dizzying swirl of bright, sugary synth melodies and trickling water, resembling music from a trippy old children's television program. One of
Dntel's most delicate, autumnal records,
The Seas Trees See flirts with songcraft but generally plays like a series of moments re-created from sepia-toned memories, expressing some feelings clearly but leaving much up to mystery. ~ Paul Simpson
