Gloria de Oliveira & Dean Hurley – Oceans of Time LP Sacred Bones

The earth rotates, seasons change… there is but one long day…

Time is a beguiling, indistinct entity… sometimes standing still, sometimes bending back upon itself with premonitions or memories of the future. Growing out of a pen pal style correspondence that took place over the course of a year, separated by the Atlantic Ocean, Gloria de Oliveira and Dean Hurley passed thoughts and music back and forth that would eventually form their collaborative album, Oceans of Time. The result is an aural tapestry of that exchange: woven from conceptual threads of the celestial within, mortality and the realm beyond stars. The duo’s partnership is an effortless merge, yet it’s the steady presence of de Oliveira’s vocals that endows the record with itssense of potency. Throughout the album, there is an innate understanding of how a lyric across a chordal color can sharpen an emotional truth. Much like a sunbeam that pierces a spiderweb to reveal it’s intricacy, her lyric and melody are purposely aimed in order to illuminate the truths deep within oneself… a process that ties us all to the universal. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, a professed influence, wrote about the truth as something that was inherently subjective, less about the concrete reality of what is believed and more about how it is experienced by the believer. Frequent David Lynch collaborator Dean Hurley sets the tonal and sonic landscape of each track on the album, lending a layered ether that envelops, frames and holds de Oliveira’s vocals. With it’s impressionistic synths, shimmering guitars, and ethereal sonics, Oceans of Time at moments recalls the foundational dreampop of 4AD acts like Cocteau Twins and Lush. The album feels especially attuned to the connections between the physical and transcendental realms, and the best dreampop has a way of making the veil between two worlds feel just a little bit thinner. Oceans of Time is a key that has the power to release it’s listener from the handcuffs of reality, however briefly….