Sverre Knut Johansen: Precambrian
Spotted Peccary Records

With Precambrian, multi-instrumentalist Sverre Knut Johansen takes on nothing less than the prehistoric development of planet Earth and its inhabitants. Crafted meticulously by the multi-instrumentalist and featuring contributions from electronic artist Robert Rich, the ambient-electronic odyssey, Johansen's fourth Spotted Peccary release, guides the listener through seven major geological periods whose temporal expanse totals 4.6 billion years. It would be hard to imagine a theme more epic in scale, yet the Norwegian producer's handling of it isn't, thankfully, overly heavy-handed. If anything, in presenting a track-by-track account of the earth's evolutionary stages, he provides a valuable refresher for non-historians whose grasp of the planet's geological development is shaky.

In structural terms, the recording advances without interruption through seven periods, from the earliest, “Hadean Eon,” to today's, “Anthropocene”; at album's end, the title track appears, its eleven minutes encompassing the Hadean, Archean, and Proterozoic eons. Johansen thoughtfully sequenced the material, too. Sound details aren't arbitrarily distributed; on the contrary, elements emerge in the recording consistent with the epoch during which they were born. Bird sounds, for example, surface in “Mesozoic Era” (252-66 million years ago), the time of the first mammals and birds, while the appearance of stately piano melodies in the classically tinged “Cenozoic Era” (66-0 million years ago) is in keeping with a period associated with the arrival of the modern human. Johansen's sound design is conceived in accordance with the time periods, too, some being more electronic in nature and others weaving acoustic elements into their arrangements. David Helping's guitar textures and Robert Rich's baby grand piano and ‘gliss' guitar playing make a huge difference to the recording, as does a judicious incorporation of field recordings.

In evoking the earliest epoch (4.6-4 billion years ago), “Hadean Eon” is suitably mysterious and ethereal, the impression created of cosmic, primordial forces of immense scale operating and the emphasis on electronic textures; animated elements give the subsequent “Archean Eon” (4-2.5 billion years ago) a percolating propulsion befitting a period when the first glimmerings of life arise. Johansen also wisely balances epic parts with subdued ones, the understated “Mesozoic Era” providing a relatively peaceful resting place midway through the recording. In this rather melancholy portrait, steel guitar-like textures and piano emerge alongside whooshing electronics and field recordings that suggest the emergence of the first mammals.

A noticeable change happens with the advent of “Anthropocene,” as war sounds at the track's start, for example, give the material a foreboding character and the music nudges into industrial territory in emphasizing lumbering, machine-like sounds and rhythms. How sad that the Earth's magnificent journey should bring it to a place reeling from environmental disasters, global unrest, animal extinctions, and nuclear threat. One should be perhaps grateful that Johansen chose to close the release with the sweeping title track rather than end it on such a dispiriting note.

August 2019