The title Sunbeam of No Illusion, the first recorded collaboration between musicians Ben Seretan and John Thayer, is derived from actual correspondence between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, as Emerson praised Whitman’s writing. This quote serves as an acknowledgement of the mutual admiration between these two contemporary artists. While Seretan and Thayer have never officially released music together, they’ve both previously played in ensembles and toured together. This album brings together their collective talents, not to mention their uncanny knack for gorgeous ambient improvisations.
On the record’s Bandcamp page, the critic Leo Marx is quoted, particularly for his analysis of the American Transcendentalists, in which he describes the “machine in the garden”, a pastoral reverie punctured by the modern sounds of industry. Seretan and Thayer bring that machine to life through keyboard melodies, loops, guitars, percussion, and a mild glitch in the effects, all executed with measured calm. Both musicians play a variety of instruments, but the basic breakdown is Seretan on keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, and guitar pedals and Thayer on effects, modular synthesizer, and percussion (Thayer is a trained drummer and percussionist, not to mention a prolific audio engineer).
The primary thrust of much of the songs is the gentle warmth of Seretan’s Fender Rhodes, particularly prominent on songs such as “Memory Garden”, its calming retro buzz joined by an undertone of synthesizers and distant electric guitar filtered through effects. In “Little Winds”, the Rhodes employs a mild jazz fusion vibe, sounding like an update of Miles Davis‘ early electric period, as a synth sequencer pulses with synths and traces of percussion.
Those sounds of nature that seem inspired by Whitman’s writings are evident in more field-recording-heavy tracks like “Field Notes #1”, “Wild Mint Breeze”, and “Field Notes #2”, where wind and water weave through them, creating a truly transcendent atmosphere. However, the duo are not averse to more insular, hermetic sounds on tracks like the subtle, futuristic “Valley Spirit” and the jittery, slightly off-kilter “Ink Dark Moon”. The 11 songs vary only slightly in style, as if Sunbeam of No Illusion is more of an extended piece, albeit a constantly engaging one.
While Seretan and Thayer have combined discographies that cover a wide variety of stylistic territory, the ambient worlds they explore here should be no surprise to anyone who’s heard Seretan’s albums like My Life’s Work (2018) and Cicada Waves (2021) or Thayer’s Currents (2019) and Listening Sky (2024).
Still, Sunbeam of No Illusion stands as a sublime example of an ambient collaboration that combines the organic with the electronic, what poet Richard Brautigan, quoted on the Bandcamp page, dreamed as “a cybernetic forest – computers in the trees”. No Illusion is meant to be treasured, a musical companion that deserves to be heard above the din of the often brutal real world.