The Immensity Of The Ocean

Music is my soul-food. The intimacy of the sound penetrating your ears and body is so unique and addictive. Oceansize is one of those bands whose music marked my life profoundly, and each listening brings back that same overwhelming feeling: this sound is my drug of choice

I was introduced to Oceansize back in 2007 by one of my dearest friends, a fellow music addict. They popped up in the recommended feed on his LastFM wall. I remember well his enthusiasm, “you need to listen to this band, it will blow your mind”.

The first song I ever heard was I am the morning. It sounded strangely familiar yet very different from the music I used to listen. And it was more than enough to make me understand that this band is creating more than a mere sound: I experienced a full immersion into a dreamy atmosphere that forces you to abandon whatever you’re doing in that moment and just listen.

As years were passing by, Oceansize never seized to amaze me, with both old and new albums. It was never an easy listening, I must admit, especially for a music lover without any technical background such as myself. But it has always been the most rewarding listening I ever experienced. The even and odd rhythms, wrapped around the melodies that can be the soothing and aggressive, and lyrics that often leave you confused but eager to discover the meaning on your own.

The Oceansize songs featured on the soundtrack of my life

These songs in particular have gifted me the most incredible range of emotions over the years, quite impossible to translate into words. I believe that every act of listening is unique and unrepeatable, contextualized in a time/space frame. However, I would like to try to explain some of those feelings, even though words will hardly do the justice.

I am the morning – one of the hardest things to do is to begin, to change the state from idle to active; if I manage to start, the progress will come naturally and seamlessly, whether I succeed or fail

Legal Teens – I can rediscover happiness in things long-forgotten, so I started to hoard memories, on the verge of the fear of oblivion; painting those memory canvases in my mind makes it much easier to go back to certain experience and to harness their morals that can be useful to me today

Ornament/The Last Wrongs – this world around me is so beautiful in its imperfection, and all I want to do is help others see it in all its splendor; sharing is the new empathy

The Charm Offensive – everyone needs more disarming things in life, something that can cure all your aches instantly, even if temporarily; this song is like a reset button for me: stop, relax & breathe, rewind, and you will manage it for sure

The only time I saw Oceansize live was one of their last concerts, in a small club BeCool in Barcelona, in November 2010. Aside the lovely chat my husband and I had with Steve Durose before the concert (who was pleasantly surprised to hear that we came all the way from Rome just to hear them), the incredible set-list in this cozy atmosphere confirmed all my expectations: one can be talented and humble at the same time, unpretentious yet brilliant.

One more feeling I relate to them is the joy of sharing music. Oceansize reached a limited number of listeners, I’d say the privileged ones.  This is the reason why there is this unique feeling of instant happiness when meeting a fellow Oceansize lover, unlike for any other band.

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are”, a quote from an indie game Hue, is phrase that helped me understand why we choose certain kind of music in life. I know that there is a tiny piece of this immense Ocean inside of me.

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After Oceansize, luckily, some band members still continue to create amazing music, like British Theater and Vennart. Different music, but you can feel that same dazzling atmosphere. Visit these new soundscapes, you’ll love them.

For further reading check out these 2 insightful interviews with Mike Vennart by Audrin Baghaie, published on dailylobo.com, and with Remfry Dedman for independent.co.uk.

If you live in Italy check out the new issue of Prog Italia, featuring the article by Lorenzo Barbagli on Oceansize and the remastered version of Effloresce.