Joanna Brouk / SOUNDS OF THE SEA

Joanna Brouk’s most ambitious recording, Sounds of the Sea is a concept album full of mystery and eroticism. An immersive world populated by pulses, swells, drones and voices, Sounds of The Sea taking us on Hindustani-tinged journey with shimmering lines executed on synths, threaded by Joanna’s vocal drones, while Celestial Lake weaves imagistic expanses from slowly evolving melodies, culminating as immersive and meditative world of its own. A conch shell bookends this journey into the deep, going down and down and down further, never reaching bottom. Drawing inspiration from various legends of mermaids and sailors, Brouk weaves circling flutes, vocals, drones and whale songs to describe a sense of unfathomable longing more clearly than words could ever express. Sounds of the Sea is a hypnotic and profound achievement by one of new age’s greatest composers.

Brouk was a pioneer of electronic and new age music who explored the underlying sounds of words and their effects on the emotions and health. She also wrote extensively for theatre, television and radio. At Mills College Center for Contemporary Music in Oakland, California, she studied under Terry Riley and Robert Ashley, and in the 1980s she released a series of cassettes on her Hummingbird Productions label.