Seawind of Battery

The word relaxed often crops up when talking about Mike Horn’s work, and it’s a fair descriptor for much of Seawind of Battery’s catalog. From the first strains of Seawind’s debut in 2022, Horn’s band has captured the moment when the sun hits the horizon, a kind of cresting of the infinite as it caresses the corner of the cosmos. The debut reveled in quietude, digging into shadows of Americana as they grew larger in the afternoon sun. There were shades of Bruce Langhorne alongside the more modern melt of Barry Walker Jr. and Andrew Tuttle. All of those shades remain, but on East Coast Cosmic Dreamscaper, Seawind expands and pulls past the ambient country canyon.

The most prominent shift is a sense of rhythm that’s applied to quite a few songs here. There was always a subtle sway, a psychic chug that served as rudder in Horn’s work, but here the light lap of the drum machine is more prominent — a full embrace of Kosmiche can be found splashing new hues on his amber horizon. There’s also an uplifting buzz to the album, something ineffable that hits the air, seeps into the tape, and twines into the bones of the record. The closest contemporary reference I might add is William Tyler, a force for euphoric Americana in his own right, a guitarist who paints his pieces in resplendent tones. Horn is dipping into the same palette on ECCD, setting the listener aloft on motorik missives tied to the knotted acoustic ache and buttered steel that have become Seawind’s trademarks. The album marks a huge leap forward and jumps to the top of the Cosmic American crest for 2024. Clockwatching may have been made to heal wounds, but ECCD is here to get you back out into the world.

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