Big Earth Energy

Having crested the west coast modular-ambient wave in just a few releases - including 2018's "Sharing Waves" on the influential LA experimental imprint Leaving Records - Sean Hellfritsch has swapped the mossy analog synth improvisations of his prior output for refined melodic arrangements dressed in sprightly dawn-of-digital textures. "Big Earth Energy" plumbs the depths of Hellfritsch's multimedia mind and naturalist heart, spinning an impressionistic narrative world off of cultural touchstones like the PC game MYST and the work of Studio Ghibli composer Joe Hisaishi. Inspired by the aforementioned and guided by Hellfritsch's experience as an animator and filmmaker, "Big Earth Energy" is the soundtrack to a hypothetical video game with a pointedly ecological premise and a twist of psychedelic charm. In Hellfritsch's imagined virtual journey, the player assumes the perspective of a treefrog sixty-five million years ago, hopping epochs with each new level, forming a comprehensive picture of the massive changes the planet has gone through over the eons. The ultimate goal of the game is not to amass resources, defeat enemies, or gain power, but to fully witness the unfolding of one of the biggest systems of energy imaginable - or as the album's creator puts it - "to explore the incomprehensibly vast energetic expression and mystery that is Earth." "Big Earth Energy" is steeped in exploratory RPG intrigue, possibility, and contemplation, lovingly overlaid