Shape Navigator – Journal (Coastal Electronauts) – These are busy times, these are fractured times, tense times, they might well be the start of end times, there is no time, sometimes you need to make time. Been needing to make time for the pure pleasure of Whitstable’s Shape Navigator and this just released album for a little while now, it actually came out a couple of weeks ago and it really is rather beautiful. Journal comes with a warm glow, it really is rather good. And I do rather like that this comes from Whitstable, truth is it could be from anywhere yet somehow Whitstable and the coast of England sounds just about right and especially today on this glorious English Spring day, this is a good day to get properly lost in this album for a few hours.
Shape Navigator is the electronic alter ego of composer and sound artist Peter Coyte. Emerging from the UK ambient and progressive house scene via Guerilla Records in the 1990s, he has collaborated with artists including Coldcut, Seal and David McAlmont, and works across music, sound art and installation. He is a co-founder of Coastal Electronauts. Coastal Electronauts activities are always worth checking out, as a label they set themselves high standards, their gatherings and gigs always look like they’re going to rather rewarding, there’s a real sense of a positive collective of people revolving around Coastal Electronauts down there by the seaside.
Journal is a warm full bodied fully-formed collection of delicious pieces of instrumental music, a collection of inviting welcoming embracing slowing moving (not too slow we’re not talking doom or gloom) piece of music that are so so easy to listen to.
Peter Coyte or (someone from the label) tells us that “Journal is a deeply personal sonic diary, capturing two years of spontaneous creation and exploration on synthesisers. Each track originates from a live improvisation built from unrehearsed, unedited performances where instinct shapes structure and emotion guides sound. Created during a period marked by difficult personal life events, Journal reflects the turbulence, vulnerability, and quiet resilience that emerged along the way. Moments of heaviness seep into the droning harmonics and uncertainty pulses through shifting sequences. Flashes of clarity surface in resonant chords that cut through the haze. These performances became a refuge – an immediate way to translate complicated feelings into sound” – if that really is what we have here, all the turbulence and vulnerability, then it feels like he has come through, that maybe he found something in the making of these pieces that worked? This is gloriously uplifting, positive, beautiful, affirming and that bit there, that bit about one and a half minutes into Suspicion feels like the sun breaking through the clouds, that bit gets me every time, Actually there’s loads of bits that just sweep you up, whole flows of it, the whole thing does. It has some of the feeling of a Jean Michel Jarre album, that same flow, that warmth, if this was made “during a period marked by difficult personal life events” than it really is beautiful cathartic, a touch Kraftwerk maybe and yes these are rather mainstream electronic names being dropped here, but this is really up there in terms of warm inviting forward-moving inviting flow, this really is a rather beautiful rather highly recommended album and crucially it has a personality of its own, it possesses a distinct, consistent flow that really does set it apart, it does indeed cut through the haze in a rather wonderful way… (sw)
Bandcamp / Coastal Electronauts
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