Listen to The Ocean’s New Track, “Turritopsis Dohrnii”
Not to be lost in the fact that The Ocean just released a special, one-off new track: it has now been over four years since the band put out a full album! Fuck. Pelagial was incredible, possibly their best work yet, and though they’ve undergone some lineup changes since its recording, when has this band not? It’s the Robin Staps show, and everyone knows it. Here’s to hoping a new one’s in the works!
About the new track: it’s called “Turritopsis Dohrnii,” named after an immortal species of jellyfish, it was recorded during the Pelagial sessions and will appear on a double-disc, 30 song compilation coming this fall highlighting Staps’ Pelagic Records eight year history as a label. The first disc of In the Twilight, These Rocks Have Teeth focuses on the label’s post-rock cuts while the second disc goes heavier. By those definitions the Ocean’s cut, which is instrumental, could really go on either, although it appears on disc two. Mono, Cult of Luna, Sleepmakeswaves, Bison, Abraham, Family and more all have cuts on the compilation.
Here’s Robin Staps’ fascinating explanation of the track and the bizarre creature after which it is named:
“Turritopsis dohrnii is a jellyfish that lives in the Mediterranean; it is the only immortal species on Earth. Jellyfish are weird creatures.They start their lives as polyps, which are basically something closer to a plant than to an animal, something that grows on a rock. These polyps reproduce asexually, by cell division. The result becomes the free-swimming medusa, a jellyfish. Jellies then reproduce sexually, before they die … except this little guy here. Once the adult form of the species have reproduced, they revert back into their juvenile polyp state. They shrink, their tentacles disappear and they sink to the ocean floor to start their unique life cycle all over again — and not just once, but infinitely.
“This track begins and ends with the same part, reflecting that eternal cycle. Learning about this tiny creature made me think about how we are desperately striving for physical rejuvenation and intellectual immortality — the other side of the coin is the fact that we barely see any old people these days. In a city like Berlin, everyone is young, healthy and pretty. Elder people get locked away in homes that most of us will never get to see or visit, unless we have family members unfortunate enough to become old.”
Stream the new track below via Revolver. In the Twilight, These Rocks Have Teeth comes out on September 29th; pre-order here.
