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 HomeWorld which is out now via Shimmering Moods. He explains: “This record is about hard sadness and of heartbreak imbued with the humble expressions of the indescribable beauty of this existence which rings true through all of it, for all time.
Musically, I am compelled toward long-form live improvisations that go on for 20-30 minutes. I then edit and manipulate and polish, carving and sculpting over and over, long days often for months on an album until it becomes a truer version of itself that was not there at conception. Much like life! I then pick the best section for the songs that infer their own structure. Also included on this album are short-form telescopic soundprints where I use a dronier and more layered approach.
Some very personal meditations make up tracks 5 and 7 and 9 of Homeworld. During a very hard and also heart-breaking beginning to the New Year of 2020 (even before the pandemic!) I recorded the pieces Sadness Too Deep and Ode to Scotty allowing the expressions of both the pain and the beauty which rang so true then, still and always. Supporting the song Ode to Scotty is a long field recording I captured in our apple orchard on the afternoon of March 3, 2020, a full moon with very heavy grey weather. Soon afterwards came the very bad news. Two days later the music was improvised while meditating with these creatures’ songs and was originally a seventeen minute piece.
Yes. Nature sounds. I am 100% addicted. Waters. Melodic winged-ones. Insects. So cliché and yet it melts my soul good. I love manipulating the recordings into a designed sound sometimes. In consort with the music it just puts me in a trance: when I am playing, when I am editing and afterwards as a listener! The combination of the piano-centric sounds and the earth samples can make one think of the new age style but these are very deliberately poised away from such deliberations to keep something I cannot put my finger on; perhaps a shying away from rhythm or repetitions; rather more like water flowing, moving over rocks; not as a clock ticking or a song singing. The exception is a new color appearing as Emerald Nymphs; this Hipnotic Earth composition uses tempo and bass and drum with inferred and sparse effects, a style I will be expanding with. The older Lakeboat is included here, another strangely hypnotic track whose call for the light of day is answered in Homeworld. I can listen to this track forever, it does something to me. I hope it does to you, too.
(I would like to make a special shout-out here to Lars Nyquist for his phenomenal photographic image “in Hope” urtida.com. Also, a big thank you to Paul for supporting this album!!)”
Check the full streaming below.