Orcas is a band by haze-pop auteur Benoît Pioulard and post-minimalist comp… Read Full Bio ↴Orcas is a band by haze-pop auteur Benoît Pioulard and post-minimalist composer Rafael Anton Irisarri (also known as The Sight Below). Theirs is a style deeply rooted in personal variations on songform and ambient craft, and as a duo they bridge the furthest outlying aspects of their previous solo work published on Kranky, Touch, Miasmah, Room40, and Ghostly International.

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The courtship of ambient music and traditional songform has been a long and tenuous one, almost to the point that their differences seem irreconcilable. Spanning decades with only a few points of obscure intersections, the occasions on which the two styles have met and crossed into the pop culture lexicon have often yielded a contrary, oil-and-water form. The abstract nature of the “ambient” genre and instant gratification of the “pop” song require deft hands for successful cohabitation, thus it’s little wonder that there are so few practitioners of its delicate equilibrium.

Orcas – comprised of haze-pop auteur Benoît Pioulard and post-minimalist composer Rafael Anton Irisarri – is an imaginative return to that narrative. Theirs is a style deeply rooted in personal variations on songform and ambient craft, and as a duo they bridge the furthest outlying aspects of their previous solo work published on Kranky, Touch, Miasmah, Room40, and Ghostly International. Here song and abstraction become one entity, condensing the spaces between to generate an arching trajectory. This co-mingling of contrasts is even coded into their moniker; Pioulard and Irisarri have chosen an iconic symbol of the American Pacific Northwest, a methodical sea hunter that is also a totem of the open oceans' expanse. The so-called “wolf of the seas” that evokes a quiet, stately, yet powerful nature.

Appropriately, their music is a careful balance of chiaroscuro elements, where pop hook and spatial ambience converge. In its environs, lyricism flows as a time-distended dynamic, rising and falling, proceeding almost antithetically to pop's typical gratification ethos. Orcas has taken an immersive, fluid vector for their passions; a resonant call like sonar from the depths.

It was announced via their website that Orcas would be following up their Morr Music debut with a second release April 4, 2014 entitled "Yearling." This sophomore release also featured the musical contributions of Martyn Heyne (Efterklang) on guitar and piano, and Michael Lerner (Telekinesis) on drums.

Selah
Orcas Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Its verdant blankets
Drape the sleeping shoulders
Of subcutaneous, subterraneous shiverers

It's carved in the skin
Its sides arise with grace to the finial

Her silence is whipping winds

& its eyes alight from faces of the pitiful

Sides arise
Eyes alight

Overall Meaning

The lyrics of Orcas’s song Selah are rich in imagery and metaphorical language. The first line ‘Its verdant blankets’ refers to the lush greenery of a forest, which is described as a blanket that covers the sleeping shoulders of ‘subcutaneous, subterraneous shiverers.’ This is a metaphor for the trees and plants that provide shelter and nourishment to creatures that live underground, such as insects and small animals.

The second line ‘It's carved in the skin’ is a reference to the natural landscape being deeply ingrained in the environment and the people that live there. The following line ‘Its sides arise with grace to the finial’ describes the natural beauty of the landscape and how it rises and falls with elegance.

The third line ‘Her silence is whipping winds’ suggests a sense of foreboding, where the quietness of nature is juxtaposed with harsh, whipping winds. The last line ‘& its eyes alight from faces of the pitiful’ describes how nature has the power to react and respond to human experiences and emotions.

Overall, Orcas's song Selah seems to be celebrating the beauty and power of nature, while also recognizing its ability to cause destruction and chaos when faced with human sorrow and suffering.

Line by Line Meaning

Its verdant blankets
The lush greenery covers the surroundings

Drape the sleeping shoulders
It covers the motionless bodies

Of subcutaneous, subterraneous shiverers
Of creatures shivering under the skin and underground

It's carved in the skin
Inscribed and imprinted on the flesh

Its sides arise with grace to the finial
Its forms and boundaries extend elegantly to the top

Her silence is whipping winds
The stillness of its presence is like a gusty force

& its eyes alight from faces of the pitiful
And its gaze is lit up by the sight of the unfortunate

Sides arise
The boundaries rise

Eyes alight
Gaze ignited

Writer(s): Rafael Irisarri, Thomas Meluch

Contributed by Isaac D. Suggest a correction in the comments below.

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