Jeff Greinke - Noctilucent (2022)

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Jeff Greinke - Noctilucent (2022)

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Jeff Greinke’s new album Noctilucent (Latin for night shining) takes its name from a rare cloud that glows with wavy striations of light, closer to the stars than any other cloud in the sky. It is from this vantage point that Greinke once again demonstrates his mastery of sonic world-building. Just as the word “noctilucent” inspires an image, each of these nine pieces sets a sonic scene for the listener.

Drawing from the visual and aural surroundings of his Tucson, Arizona home, Greinke says: “I take long walks in the desert, sometimes at night under a full moon, and am often inspired by what I see, hear, and experience – the texture of the landscape, clouds, the sound of birds and insects, changing light, and different kinds of weather.” He crafted Noctilucent by synthesizing his sound manipulations and electronic instruments with the desert he was exploring. When a sound caught his ear, he honed in on it. A bright tone, an eerie chime: at first a lone figure in an unfinished diorama. Then, he layered detail after detail over that initial sound – and set the scene.

Each piece on Greinke’s new work offers a vivid world to wander through. Opener “Unrest” immediately draws the listener into a dense and complex world. A whistle is the evening wind across dark sands while a reverberation is an insect’s fluttering wings. And yet, subterranean clangs signal something ominous stirring beneath. The title track is a nighttime walk down a moonlit street, moths making dusty halos around amber streetlamps. And somehow, far above, the sky is clear but for those nearly imperceptible clouds. The moths do not see them, but they are there.

Noctilucent stimulates the listener’s imagination, invites visualization. The night is the realm of the unknown, the hidden, when all things are veiled by shade. There is danger and discovery in the unknown, and thus it beguiles. This is night music: nine pieces that strike the balance of tranquility and menace that can only be struck in the dark – a place well beyond anything ambient.