Polaris

YGAM presents ‘Polaris’, Ōtone’s new 4 tracks EP, where arctic and marine landscapes take form in experimental compositions.

With a background in film directing and an ongoing investigation of the sonic properties of specific environments, label's founder Ōtone proposes a highly contemplative project that invites the listeners to explore the polar regions of the northern hemisphere. Emphasizing the power of imagination and acoustic memory, the artist creates various sceneries that stimulate images of desolated ice fields, dark underwater plains and drifting watercrafts. As an intimate take on the cold, Ōtone develops a collection of howling winds and currents in the line of artists such as Thomas Köner, Biosphere and Periskop. These landscapes are intertwined with industrial sonic presences and vocal hummings, as if they were slowly invaded by human activity. However, these anthropological intrusions appear as ghostly manifestations as if they were lost in the extreme environment where they ventured. Composed with long reverberations, obscure drones, feedbacks, electro-acoustic experimentations and field recordings, as well as the drumming of Jannis Düster, the EP binds the listeners to a sense of space and emptiness that evokes a certain simplicity.

'Polaris' is an unsettling and remote journey in the Arctic Circle that resonates through ambient and drone music, and acts as a submerged and uncanny testimony of current environmental issues.