Electronic musician Marielle V Jakobsons and pedal steel guitar player Chuck Johnson have worked together extensively, both in concert and on record, but Saariselka is their first full-scale collaborative project. The duo play ambient Americana, channeling the energy of natural phenomena such as the Aurora Borealis into warm, glowing soundscapes. The six songs on The Ground Our Sky are vast and expansive, but also highly focused, and they perfectly channel an experience of being all alone in a prairie and gazing at the stars, feeling a bit melancholy but also free and unbound. Jakobsons sings on "Into the Wind" and "Void," two gorgeous pieces of country-dream pop which embrace the sensation of weightlessness. Otherwise, the instrumental selections which make up the remainder of the album are just as far from captivity. "Subsurface" has a vague undercurrent of feeling amused and excited by the prospect of having no obligations to the outside world, while the shimmering keyboards and weeping steel guitar of "Neochrome" and "Afterlight" are equally blissful and longing. Truly a natural-sounding collaboration, Saariselka's debut is rich, evocative, and sublime.
© Paul Simpson /TiVo