Off Land - Out World

A Closer Listen

The lambent drones of Out World rise up, crowning the canopy of a jade-painted jungle. One golden synth flows into another, filling the atmosphere with nothing but an air of serenity. Raindrops hang from the tips of leaves as the humid pads and barely-there field recordings slowly wake from their slumber.

The insightful music of Out World is a lush rainforest in the prime of its life, with an entrenched reverb settling in and hanging over the music like a shroud of mist at seven a.m. Her echoes are both tonally clear and thoroughly soaked; completely mystical.

This is Off Land‘s first release on the label Sea Of Clouds, and it’s a transcendent, ever-morphing trip to a world beyond. American Tim Dwyer shapes a world of constant wonder, where synths shift like vast seas of sand and fantastical sights come into view around every turn. A silver waterfall dissects this new, enlightened civilization, and creaking huts provide what must be shelter to an alien tribe. Slanted sanctuaries of bright white light pierce the sky.

The music is palatial in itself, like grand jewellery from another planet. Princess Jasmine would say it’s a whole new world, and she’d be right. In one sense, the music is like a magic carpet ride, ascending everything and sweeping the listener away. It’s more about entering a new, bold world and less about escaping the present one. Everything is too real, too sharp and full-blooded for it to be thought of as mere escape. That wouldn’t be doing the music justice. No, it’s more like a natural evolution of things, the future as glimpsed in the year 3100.

Each synth is a slow blooming rose. A recurring melody gives “Poise” more of a structure, but it’s still an iridescent design, as flexible as a Yoga instructor and as colourful as a prism. Out World lies outside of space and time, lingering in another dimension as well as lingering on a single note for what feels like a millennia. (James Catchpole)

Available here