Ian Haygreen’s track “Thin on the Ear” isn’t thin by any means. It has three layers at the very least. There is an underlying tick tock of a beat, a slow-paced melody atop it, and then in between a slightly out-of-sync gurgle, all rumbly and hard to fully get a sense of, both as a result of its constant motion and it being out of sonic focus. They all strike the ear, collectively, as being akin to strata of biological development. The beat is purely mechanical, rote, while that gurgle seems primordial, maybe without consciousness but most certainly alive. The melody is the most developed, according to this structure. It is simple enough, just a note at a time, that it feels more eked out than composed, like it is finding its way, like something that has just pulled itself on land and is getting to know the territory. The tentative life forms find balance with the routinized machine.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/ian-haygreen. More from Haygreen, who’s based in Northwest Essex, at twitter.com/IanHaygreen and borealechoes.wordpress.com.