White relies on his tom toms and a muted snare, almost leaving his cymbals out of the mix entirely until over halfway through the tune's nearly 11 minutes. Turner plays its straight, creating a chord structure that follows the dynamic changes in Ellis' minimal style, from one melody to the next, with no more than 12 notes total.
Dirty song rating series#
The centerpiece of the album - from which there is no return, either to "traditional" D3 form or to anything else considered rock music - is "Authentic Celestial Music." Ellis, for the first time, overdubs his violin, creating a series of drones and overlapping melodies. On "Distant Shore," a tune built on three chords and a fragment, Ellis puts the album's tentative nature forth in the elegantly twisting lilt of his violin, creating a melody that is simply a chant, as Turner and White slip around his center, creating a view of the shore and the ground, mirage-like and ephemeral, and presented through a watery prism, as mournful, left behind, turned away from. On the tentative opener, "Sirena," Warren Ellis plays two- and three-notes lines, held interminably against Turner's pastoral and minimal guitar flourishes while Jim White's rhythmic constructs glisten and shimmer through the middle, offering it all more room to drift rather than create a frame. There are hints in guitarist Mick Turner's gorgeous cover painting, which shows a tranquil mermaid on one side, a near tidal wave over a red boat on the back sleeve, and both in deep blue against a light blue background, seemingly under the ocean. It's as if the D3 were on a vessel, playing to the ocean itself. Are D3 playing songs inspired by or seemingly "created" from the ocean? Or are they paying homage to the ocean? The music here keeps all tempos reigned in and all instrumental flurries to a minimum, creating the feeling of waves lapping and pouring into and out of one another. There is an aesthetic at work on Ocean Songs, from the cover through to the last note of the original recordings (early issues of the CD came with a second CD with three bonus tracks, all of which have surfaced elsewhere), the purpose of which is held in the somewhat mysterious title. While the band's previous recordings - Sad & Dangerous, Dirty Three, and Horse Stories - have all, in some way, attempted to capture the trio's live show, where slow, winding patterns and riffs become a swirling churning blast of emotional cacophony for both musicians and listeners, Ocean Songs takes a very different tack to achieve an end that is similar, but more focused. The Dirty Three's fourth venture into long-play territory is easily their most controversial, and a decided change in direction.
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