deadseapianorolls

the tumbled sea

the tumbled sea was a solo project of one Sam Lee of Boston, Massachusetts. The music of the tumbled sea sits somewhere between ambient and western chamber music, with sparse textures typically involving piano and synthesizer, as well as other elements like nonmusical samples, and mellotron-style accompaniment by violin-family instruments and woodwinds. Although the music of the tumbled sea insists on simplicity and even minimalism, it conveys a hauntingly beautiful quality that feels more genuine and amateurish than it does cynical or calculated.

“songs by the tumbled sea” was originally self-released, but later was re-issued in 2009 alongside the original release of “melody summer” by futurerecordings. futurerecordings was a label started by Adam Nanaa of the highly influential early-1990s post-hardcore band Indian Summer. Sometime in 2019, futurerecordings’s bandcamp and Facebook pages (among other things) were deleted.

notes on the distributions

futurerecordings used to have a bandcamp page (archived), although it can no longer be found. Back when it existed, I downloaded the tumbled sea’s music — unfortunately, the same problem occured here that occured with The Brave Little Abacus. At the time, I downloaded in CBR 320kb/s MP3, so that’s all I have here.

“songs by the tumbled sea” had two bonus tracks (“untitled for piano and violins” and “untitled for piano”) added to the end of the album for the futurerecordings re-issue.

“melody summer” is sometimes spelled with a forward slash, like e.g. “Melody/Summer”. Here, we use the spelling given by futurerecordings’s bandcamp listing.

the tumbled sea discography

title	songs by the tumbled sea	melody summer
cover art
other art	original self-release cover	CD-R release cover CD-R release inner sleeve CD-R release inner sleeve flap CD-R release disc CD-R release wide shot of components
year	2008	2009
tracklist	1 97202 4:45 2 walking 6:25 3 emily's song 4:40 4 children building this rainman out of snow 4:44 5 A song for staying in. 5:56 6 a growing recognition of the genius of birds. 3:15 7 sleeps 1:48 8 may 4:56 9 we're turning into regular people 4:31 10 doves 6:27 11 a love song 0:54 12 the people you never knew about 2:35 13 untitled for piano and violins 3:10 14 untitled for piano 2:49 total duration 56:55	1 summer ii 8:22 2 summer v 2:33 3 summer iii 4:00 4 summer iv 5:00 5 melody i 3:05 6 melody ii 3:27 7 melody iii 6:35 8 Ø 3:00 9 \\ 4:41 10 melody iv 2:41 11 summer vi 1:38 total duration 45:02
distributions	dspr? format source gratis? URLs yes MP3 @ 320kb/s (CBR) bandcamp yes [1] [2] [3]	dspr? format source gratis? URLs yes MP3 @ 320kb/s (CBR) bandcamp yes [1] [2] [3]