The assorted members of Australian experimental group Ektoise are involved in a plethora of other musical outlets, one of which is Subsea, the solo project of Jim Grundy. Untitled V is an album released in 2017, and while the title suggests otherwise, doesn’t appear to be the fifth in a series. What it is, is perhaps the release that most lives up the Subsea name, sounding as if it’s playing out from some sort of depths.
Though a purely digital release, its music is imbued with the surface noise and crackle of vinyl which, while it usually blights anything and everything, here becomes an integral component in its oblique, vaguely hauntological mode of expression. A sense of strain is prevalent, of a music playing out against the odds, emerging through layers of depth and detritus, fighting to be heard like an old, damaged, sonic artefact.

In the first of the four untitled tracks, we hear a soft, diatonic pitchspace being established, though in less than a minute it starts to sound less clear or certain, more distant with lower register stuff moving about indistinctly. The ambiance becomes muddy, and there’s the impression of overcompression, a weird simultaneous mix of loudness and fragility (reinforcing the sense of an old music having been fought to be recovered, by all means necessary). What transpires is a permanent tension, where the soft centre is continually surrounded by more edgy elements, yet the whole is held together like a mobile, in a weirdly complementary balance. It fades such that the crackle takes over, with a strange, angular melody, as if produced by some kind of mechanical motor, singing in its closing moments.
Track two comprises a gentle ambient soundscape, potentially conveying prettiness but this is kept at bay somewhat due to the unclarity, as if heard through a filter. That only seems to reinforce its beauty all the more, beguilingly teasing as to the nature of its heavily muffled source, which at times appears to be voices singing. Later a lovely series of light, chiming reverberations runs through the texture, a mesmerising effect. The third track pares back all movement to a kind of tilting. Still muffled, this is music of real stillness, swaying slightly on a pivot point, while the murky texture – betraying barely any hints at all about its nature (bells, possibly?) – experiences a repose when its lower register material vanishes for a time. It’s a heady concoction, perpetually tempting and thwarting the ear, never really moving, never really static, and could seemingly continue forever, its end coming as an abrupt cancellation.
The album closes with the combination of slightly muscular bass movement, displaying a curious kind of shuffling, pulsing progression, beneath muted, chime-like plinking arpeggios. Solemn and playful simultaneously yet, as previously, somehow sounding in sympathy. The two elements cycle round and round, the bass rising and falling until it quietly disappears, exposing the extent to which what remains sounds stodgy and confined to a relatively narrow pitch band. Only the faint metallic edge of the chiming arpeggios has anything approaching brightness, though they remain playful even as they fade, becoming swallowed up in the surface noise.
Untitled V is available as a free download from the Subsea Bandcamp site.