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The split album starts with Still, expressing movement and stillness together, a lovely contrast, with the soothing sound of waves, a nice stereo effect, a thick, saturated, bass-heavy synth line washes over the mix while distorted guitar harmonics add a tonal shift that lends even more to the melancholia. Endless Melancholy eponymously tugging the listener’s heart strings… Opening the album with a tone of longing, pain, and the sounds of the ocean. As the song ends, the listener finds themselves walking along the shore, thoughts and memories seem to come in with the tide, and more distorted guitar for the contrasts. Endless Melancholy’s side is paced in its development, taking steps slowly, working through the tones slowly, pensively, almost waiting for something to come… It carefully builds from a “desolation” into a more hopeful “melancholy,” a sadness in memoriam–and the artist works well going into the second half of the split. With Like An Old Memory We Are Washed Ashore it is very fitting for it to end the first half this way, as Desolate Horizons’ style tends to be more droney and less emotionally heavy. I can’t really stress enough how well the first half leads into the second, and when I had first listened to it, I hardly noticed that the artists had changed since each track leads seamlessly into the next, in addition to the 5th track’s hopefulness.

With the second half, it comes as an answer to the despair of the first half, and with titles like Your Echoes Drift Through Me Like Waves Caressing The Shores, it’s a very hopeful sort of wistfulness with the titles of the tracks telling a story as they progress. The ocean theme is very well-represented here, the deep and the unknown clearly on display… The imagery of The World Slips Away As We Dance In The Fire: a bonfire on a dark night, forgetting all that’s around with the one you love, dancing into the flame to be purified–it’s heavy symbolism that lends itself to the hopefulness, a contrast to the beginning five tracks. Noisy, static hiss and synth-pad drones close out the album with a relaxing, yet movement-filled drones, listless and on the waves, lost at sea–and yet, We’re Coming Home Now, the final track states. It ends on such a lovely note–an ending tied to a beginning…

Here is the album, available from Hidden Vibes.

Also available from Endless Melancholy’s bandcamp and [Desolate Horizon’s bandcamp]https://desolatehorizons.bandcamp.com/album/deep-as-the-dark-blue-sea).