If the sea had teeth what would they look like? (You’ve probably never wondered). If you have asked yourself such a question, you’ll likely have to keep pondering. As to what they would sound like, well Sam Barton, Mike Bourne and Jimmy Martin, known collectively as Teeth of the Sea, have been providing an answer to that question since their first record (2009’s Orphaned by the Ocean). Hive (Rocket Recordings) is the group’s sixth full-length release. 

And what do these teeth coming out of the sea sound like in 2023? Quite a lot of things as it happens. The sea, it seems, is a multifaceted, shifting beast. 

Name-checking everything from Nurse With Wound, Italo-disco, Minimal Techno, Stereolab, Roxy Music, Vangelis, The Knife, Labradford and John Barry, Hive is not a record to be described in a few easy sentences. Layered in various electronic textures, the music shifts and evolves from one track to the next, sometimes spaced out and drifting — as on opener “Artemis” with its gentle, childlike keyboard refrain and lazy trumpets (presumably synths) — sometimes energetically pulsing, like the dancefloor-ready, nine-minute, dub-infused hypnotism of “Megafragma”. 

For the most part instrumental, Teeth of the Sea brings in guest vocals, courtesy of Kath Gifford (Snowpony, Sleazy Tiger, The Wargs), on the appropriately titled “Butterfly House”, with its fluttering synth arpeggio and staccato base notes coming in light bursts. Gifford’s voice is soft and warm like Kirsty McColl soaked overnight in honey. The band meanwhile throws in some neat guitar phrases and a little face-melting guitar solo into the mix, demonstrating the truth in the press release’s statement that the only limits to the band’s music is their collective imaginations. 

“Liminal Kin” gives a nod to Vangelis in its sci-fi soundscapes and stacks up layers of interweaving beats, techno twittering and fuzzy textures, before “Æther” slows things right down into a dreamy voyage through a misty twilight. With each track the record shifts in sound, tone and tempo, all the while maintaining an overall feel that’s warm and positive, without being sickly. 

And all the above is really only about 25% of the record. With so many exquisite little details within each track there is plenty to be revealed with successive listens to an album that already grabs the imagination in the first sitting. A very enjoyable journey carried on the back of a benign ocean. 

Give yourself over to these teeth for a nibble. 

Buy the album here:

https://teethofthesea.bandcamp.com/album/hive 

8 / 10 

TOM OSMAN