I remember reading the chapter “The Middlemen” with such clarity — the opening paragraph hits you right in the gut, and the sources Ian features throughout the story are incredibly engaging. This part of the book immediately adjusts your perceptions and thinking, allowing you to fully understand what some go through when out on The Outlaw Ocean. Over the course of my six tracks, I want to convey this ominous reality and also the commonly held romanticized vision of the sea, mixing sweeping soundscapes with eerie tones of impending doom to create the image of an awe-inspiring horror. 

Each of my contributions builds off the emotions of the one before it. The first track “The Cry,” is a hybrid of luring intrigue and danger with haunting organic sounds that slowly transform into electronic noises to represent a meshing of the natural world with the future. The reprise that follows it takes a stripped down approach of the same rhythms and melodies. The third and fourth songs rely on a sense of ominousness, distortions and hard and heavy beats to capture the lawlessness and fear the ocean brings. The fifth and sixth tracks recall some of the sentiments of beauty and simplicity from the main theme of “The Cry” — a contrast to the brutality evoked in the songs before it. The final track ends with a slow fade to represent the vast and unexplored sea. 

Andy Duguid