Music for Disappearing Coastlines is two things at once: on the surface, the mini-album is an elegy for the land lost by devouring seas, but as composer Kyle Preston writes, this is also a “meditation on loss – of memory, of the selves we shed with time.” As such, the music has a mournful, stately quality, holding its head high even in the midst of abrasion. The title track makes an immediate impact, tugging on the heartstrings.
The music rolls and turns, ebbs and flows like the sea ~ perhaps a bit more like the gorgeous cover than the waters against the shore. This is especially apparent in “The Sun Will Boil the Seas,” a turbulent piece that reflects its title. The effect continues on “No Shores Remain,” even as the music shifts from string trio to piano, as if to make the general specific, the notes sharp rather than rounded.
When the strings return on “A Light Flickering on the Last Surface of Water,” the melancholy doubles. The title reflects an apocalypse that could have been prevented; but in the secondary meaning, the title commemorates the last moment in which one has love, or energy, or life. One never knows when such moments may arrive; such things are only revealed in retrospect. But perhaps there is some hope, as Preston’s talk of shedding a self implies that a new self may step into the old self’s discarded shoes. The ivory “A Brief Clearing in the Fog” offers a moment of clarity, tipping toward acceptance.
Yet ultimately the water closes in, falling from above as it rises from below. The irony of the music is that it scores such a beautiful decline. Music for Disappearing Coastlines is less a rage against the dying of the light as it is like floating on a life raft, determined to drink in the final glimpses of light on water before one sinks beneath the sea. (Richard Allen)