aporia by Alex Hawthorn

During the summer of 2020, at the height of the lockdown, I would often sit at my keyboard at night and compose small snippets of chord progressions and motifs. It was as much a meditative act as it was a compositional or creative one.

I returned to these snippets in 2022 and began to stitch them together, imagining a project where each motif could exist in its original form, connected by overtones and resonances. The result is The Oddest Sea.

I felt the piece needed some type of introduction, one that would both setup the sound world for the listener, but would also contain elements that set it apart. It rarely rains in Los Angeles, but a field recording of rain on pavement and a tin roof provided the basis for the opening track, Proem (Trains).

Tracklist