Hipnotic Earth is an electro-acoustic ambient soundscape project of California based sound artist and musician Cosmos Rennert. He’s back with a new album called Starfish & Giant Foams which is out now via Dronarivm. According to the press release, it is a collection of wayward songs, new material and previously unreleased compositions; odds and ends that flow with a cohesive intention to gently coax the listener inward on a journey to imaginary yet parallel worlds.
This album marries the past and the future for Hipnotic Earth. Making music here in California in wine country inspires me to tame the harmonic waterfalls and streams of melodic clouds that pass and compose the hours, days and years of our listenings and ongoings; ever called to creativity and patiently dipping into the elixir of life, the magic of music and all that is good.
This is a record that flirts with many and different colors revealing newer sounds for the project. There is Dogstar which is a reunion and delves into a deep love and kinship with rhythm and bass as sparse dubby effects weave within the etheric ambient vocal featherings sung from another language by Taressa Bell; an angel of a voice who adds her own dimensions to the pieces (also heard here on the older unreleased track Rasa). Dogstar was recorded in Oct 2019 and I am full of joy at the result and is a direction I long to explore. There are also nods to a settling static slow-motion sound, tastes of sweeter trance inducing and calming drones that make it so easy to summon concentration when listening: elsewhere, rare and slight sprinklings of piano timbres dance vaguely with harmonic drift. Moon Walk is a brighter meditation, another older experiment with sounds that called for the light of day and the call here is now answered.
Listen below.