The sea has always been an excellent editor. Throw enough stories into it and, after years of patient erosion, it returns only fragments polished beyond recognition. Shane Aspegren seems fascinated by this process. On "Spiritual Cannibalism", he dives beneath the familiar surface of both sound and memory, emerging not with picturesque recordings of marine life or postcard serenity, but with something far stranger: an ecosystem where tidal currents, industrial machinery and human perception dissolve into one another until distinctions cease to matter.

The American composer, percussionist and multidisciplinary artist has never been easy to pin down. Many listeners first encountered him as one half of the adventurous electronic duo Berg Sans Nipple, while others know him through collaborations spanning indie rock, experimental composition, contemporary dance, installation art and film scoring. Across projects as diverse as Blood Wine or Honey, Ça Va Chéri, or his work with artists including Arto Lindsay, Conor Oberst and Songs: Ohia, Aspegren has consistently treated rhythm less as a fixed pulse than as a living organism. His more recent solo releases have increasingly abandoned conventional structures in favour of immersive sonic environments, exploring the physical properties of vibration itself. "Spiritual Cannibalism" feels like a natural continuation of that evolution, perhaps even one of its clearest statements.

The album's conceptual foundation is deceptively simple. Hydrophone recordings captured beneath Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour become the primary raw material from which the three extended compositions emerge. Yet this is no field-recording documentary. By the time Aspegren has processed these underwater currents, mechanical drones and accidental recordings of trains travelling beneath the harbour, the source material has been metabolised into something almost geological. The title suddenly makes sense: these sounds have not merely been sampled, they have been digested.

The opening title track immediately establishes an unusual listening perspective. Rather than placing the audience in front of an acoustic event, Aspegren seems to position us inside the medium through which sound travels. Frequencies bend and diffuse with the peculiar elasticity of water, while low-end vibrations arrive less as audible notes than as shifting pressure against the body. Listening through headphones becomes an almost tactile experience. One occasionally catches oneself wondering whether the room has subtly changed shape, which is either excellent sound design or evidence that humans remain wonderfully susceptible to acoustic suggestion.

"Passing Beneath The Sea's Floor" pushes the ambiguity even further. The recorded trains become spectral presences rather than recognisable vehicles. They resemble distant tectonic movements, immense creatures communicating through infrasonic calls, or perhaps forgotten engines still running somewhere beneath civilisation long after everyone has gone home. Aspegren avoids obvious cinematic gestures; there are no sudden climaxes or dramatic reveals. Instead, tension accumulates through microscopic transformations. The music breathes with remarkable patience, allowing textures to evolve at the pace of natural processes rather than narrative expectations.

The closing "Resonant Harbour", originally commissioned as a standalone work, serves as both culmination and expansion. At nearly thirteen minutes, it unfolds with the quiet confidence of an artist who understands that duration is not measured by clocks but by attention. Layers gradually reveal hidden harmonic relationships within what initially appeared to be pure noise. Industrial resonance unexpectedly acquires warmth; mechanical repetition begins to resemble ritual. The distinction between environment and composition quietly collapses.

What distinguishes "Spiritual Cannibalism" from many works operating within electroacoustic or drone traditions is its refusal to romanticise either nature or technology. The harbour itself is neither pristine wilderness nor dystopian machine. It is a living interface where shipping traffic, geological forces, infrastructure, tides and human activity continuously reshape one another. Aspegren captures precisely this state of coexistence without assigning moral priorities. His compositions acknowledge that contemporary landscapes are rarely untouched and that beauty frequently emerges from complicated entanglements rather than idyllic purity.

There is also an understated philosophical dimension underpinning the record. The notion of "spiritual cannibalism" suggests absorbing external experiences until they become inseparable from one's own identity. That process mirrors listening itself. Every meaningful encounter with sound leaves subtle traces behind, altering perception in ways that cannot easily be quantified. Aspegren's music invites precisely this slow internalisation. Rather than demanding interpretation, it encourages prolonged exposure.

Production throughout is exceptionally refined without becoming clinically polished. Matthew David McQueen's mastering preserves the enormous dynamic subtlety of the material, allowing whispering textures and subterranean frequencies to coexist without either overwhelming the other. Silence, too, plays an active compositional role, functioning less as absence than as another acoustic habitat waiting to be inhabited.

For listeners expecting conventional ambient music, "Spiritual Cannibalism" may initially feel unusually dense. For those willing to surrender expectations, however, its rewards steadily accumulate. This is not music that paints underwater landscapes so much as it alters one's sense of hearing itself. By the end, the harbour no longer exists merely as a geographical location but as a state of perception, where every vibration carries invisible histories and every mechanical hum contains the possibility of transcendence.

The sea keeps its secrets by constantly moving. Shane Aspegren does not attempt to decode them. Instead, he listens carefully enough to discover that mystery itself may be the most resonant instrument of all.