As the sands in the proverbial hour glass of time slowly slips through the narrow duct between the dual vases arises the new all-consuming anxieties that magnify every obsessive particle of minuteae from mortality's many sides of fragiles states. Giving us all something to cope, Brooklyn-by-Louisville, Kentucky's John Bohannon has given the world, Through the Fear of Aging, from Fire Talk Records. Over the course of four movements, Bohannon has created an anecdote to cope with the confusions, frustrations and pains of everyday life.
The title piece, “Through the Fear of Aging”, begins as a series of breaths exhaled and inhaled like instrumental yoga breaths surrounded by the rolling hills of nervous tension. Those outside urban spaces disintegrate into the tape hiss next on “Dawn of Space Travel”, where analog keys and tones are taken through a journey that softly breaks the harnesses of time and space. It is here where those background noises that are initially taken for granted become the central instrument, taking us to the temple of “The Illusion of Being Eternal”, where life's infinite questions and clothed delusions are dressed up in the safety of human kind's limited understanding of the world and the self. Concluding these four meditative elements, “A Finite Life” manages the moody synths that hum, mumble, and murmur, while the plinking of piano keys instills a calming sense of euphoria and a moment's release within the temporal world.
John described for us the four movement piece here.
Through the Fear of Aging was created in a period of major flux in my life — Basically dealing with the topic in which the recording is named. When I moved to New York five years ago, I started creating ambient music to deal my own anxieties of everyday life here. Through the process of creating this type of music, I have learned to channel my anxieties through subtlety, sometimes with a calming result, other times with troubling results. These recordings specifically dealt with several years of my life trying to create some kind of stability when I came to realize my notion of stability was completely askew. Through the Fear of Aging was an effort to cope with the struggles of stability as the years pass, and my only hope is that it can provide others some sort of calmness or perspective in their own lives.
Ancient Ocean's Through the Fear of Aging is available now from Fire Talk Records, and you can stream it below.
