Lara Sarkissian - Born of the Sea

A Closer Listen

With her background in film – shooting, editing, and scoring her own work and the work of others – it’s easy to understand why Armenian-American musician Lara Sarkissian’s swaggering, dizzying new EP, Born of the Sea, has such a cinematic feel. But it’s her musical talents and instincts that make it the evocative feast that it is.

Every track is thickly layered with swirling textures and deep, in-the-pocket rhythms that can pound forward with the earth-shaking thud of a square-wheeled tank or open out onto heart-stopping vistas, often in the same song. Floating above or braided throughout the EP is a dazzling welter of sung and spoken-word samples, a careful selection of field recordings, and sequenced native Armenian instruments. The kanun and the shvi both feature in the neck-snapping single “DBM,” recorded with the legendary Locust, aka Mark Van Hoen of Seefeel, Scala, and Slowdive fame. There’s a dazzling amount of material at play throughout and it’s to Sarkissian’s credit that every detail on BOTS stands out even as she fuses them into a satisfying totality.

Sarkissian has stated that BOTS is a conceptual meeting place between the soundtrack to an imagined thriller and her ideas about the mythic Tsovinar, Armenian goddess of rain, sea, and all things aquatic – hence the EP’s title. That element of water, specifically the waves of the ocean, also seems to provide the inspiration for Sarkissian’s sweeping and plunging rhythms.

But there’s a tactile, slow-building tension that simmers at the heart of the album’s slower tracks. Opener “Spirit as Fire” with its pulsing bass, seething, clattering textures and sinuous notes from a shvi, sets the stage for drama before revealing that the drama is the stage set itself. The title of “Ages Pass, No Tidings Come” extends the sense of anticipation while keeping the listener suspended with crispy percussion and a tasty update of the beat from Massive Attack’s downtempo classic, “Angel.” And closer “Flow Serene” opens with a rising, moody build-up that suddenly settles and smooths itself out into field recordings of ocean waves, throbbing pads, and wordless vocals from Sarkissian while assiduously avoiding New Age cliches. Those elements gradually fall back and the song fades on a steady, peaceful pulse.

Sarkissian’s previous EP, Peninsula, came out in 2019. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait another five years to see what’s next. (Damian Van Denburgh)