Naming Before Names

Mysteries of the Deep is delighted to present its second album by Portland, Oregon-based musician and multimedia artist William Selman, Naming Before Names. In a world that demands categorization of everything around us through taxonomies, genres, and strict schemas, Selman's album aims to explore the spaces between categories.

His goal is not to offer concrete explanatory gestures, but rather, to create a deliberate space for suspension and ambiguity. These eight compositions conjure a world in which humans are asked to stand on the periphery, observing their surroundings from a vantage of curious wonder, rather than clear definition.

Many of Selman's field recordings, collected over a twenty-year period, find a home here, adorning a landscape that's as visual as it is sonic; we hear hydrophone recordings of tide pools and summer lagoons, grasshopper wings in a lava field, broken humidifiers and sandstorms alongside moments of intentional instrumentation. Light vibraphone gives way to slow hand drum movements.