Premiere: Half Asking Releases Brooding Song “The Boy Who Swallowed The Sea”
Ambient metal musician Half Asking has had a busy 2018, with three records and one single being released since March. Tomorrow, the dexterous artist adds to that impressive eight month release schedule with his latest single, “The Boy Who Swallowed The Sea,” a song The Auricular is proud to premiere today, available to stream at the bottom of this article.
Turbulent and hypnotic, the instrumental song is a more restrained song from Half Asking, featuring a delicate and mournful guitar line from start to finish. But the journey that guitar line takes is anything but prosaic as the reserved mood is contorted and distorted with fuzzed out reverb and stray samples, inserting anxious and frenetic energy into the song.
In creating the song, Half Asking mastermind Jordan Welder took inspiration from a children’s book entitled The Five Chinese Brothers, a book he summarized in his own words to us:
“All the brothers have abilities, but the first brother is able to swallow the sea and collect all the fish he may want to sell. The first brother reluctantly agrees to take a small child fishing from the village. As the first brother holds the sea in his mouth, the boy runs deep into the ocean floor, collecting shells and other things that catch his attention. Eventually, the sea becomes too much for the brother to hold back and so he signals to the boy to come ashore, but the boy ignores him. It doesn’t matter how much he waves, because if he makes a single sound, the sea will come spilling out of his mouth. So the first Chinese brother just stands there, thrashing around in silence, knowing that eventually he will have to spit the sea back out. There’s nothing he can do but wait and wish.”
This single precedes Half Asking’s next full-length album, which he has been working on for the past month. A release date hasn’t been set and no title exists, though he has said it will be at least ten tracks and will be as genre-defying as his previous works.
“[The album will have] anything from mournful DSBM & explosive and cacophonous death metal, to soft and eerie ukulele,” Welder revealed. “For better or worse, this album is going to stand out.”
We’ll keep an ear out for that new album once it’s released, but until then, listen to “The Boy Who Swallowed The Sea” below and make sure to pick it up tomorrow when it will be available through Half Asking’s Bandcamp page and all other digital platforms.
