Tide pools function as self-sufficient little watery habitats, brimming with marine life and whatever goodies are swept into the rocks as the tide comes in. Portland, Oregon based Daryl Groetsch’s latest album Tide Pools is no different from its marine counterpart, functioning as an auditory ecosystem, a whole world for the imagination to run rampant and play with for 45 textured minutes, when the tide goes out until gravity pulls you back for your next listen.
The third LP from Groetsch as Pulse Emitter on Hausu Mountain Records is his sprightliest, yet Tide Pools still has familiar echoes from his previous two albums on the label, such as ‘Fireflies’, which featured on Groetsch’s 2022 album ‘Dusk’. This track is perhaps the slightly more melancholic sibling to a track like ‘Photons’ on Tide Pools, where synth leads dart around the track in varied keys and different speeds to create a glitchy yet whimsical air.
The playful feel of this album comes from a root of jazz, where tracks like ‘Geese in V’ mimic New Orleans-style Dixieland bands. An array of changing sounds from horns to plucked strings to synths, all dissolve into a functioning march without the use of an overpowering kick drum to keep rhythm. It’s jazzy and quirky, for sure, and definitely gives off a feeling of adventure and discovery. ‘Jellyfish and Friends’ follows in a more structured fashion and is the resulting product of swelling tension from ‘In a Circuit’ and ‘Geese in V’.
‘Tide Pool 1’ and ‘Tide Pool 2’ mark the definite descent into solitude, after seven tracks of unexplored territories conveyed through irregular time signatures and shifting chords. ‘Energy Flying’ rolls choral vox samples evokes a similar feel to a Koreless track. ‘So Many Leaves’ sees a rare use of snare rolls manipulated to anticipate a huge bass drop which would sweep away any intention of an IDM track. Unsurprisingly, that Skrillex-esque drop never comes, and through ‘Chip Stacking’ and ‘Bug on Desk’ a slightly off-kilter tension is forged.
Elsewhere, ‘Critters’ and ‘Fronds’ use various sound effects to submerge the listener into the 8-bit world of the tide pool, as bird caws and crickets echo throughout, accepting us among the little creatures in this overwhelming, yet peaceful habitat. For the final track, ‘Wandering’ sounds sure of itself and sensible, and in turn conveys conclusively the opposite feeling: one of settlement.
This album has an epigraph; a quote from Rush’s ‘Natural Science’, which came out in 1980. The epigraph speaks of “little creatures chasing out their destinies” in their “pools” before forgetting “about the sea”. By the end of Tide Pools, the wider drive of “chasing destinies” has evaporated, and by the final track ‘Wandering’ is replaced with a feeling of content, and settlement: acceptance that living in the small tide pools is just fine.
