I can’t believe it’s 8 years since the release of “Ocean Dynamics”…Seems like yesterday… I remember the album release back in the summer of 2006 while I was obliged to join the army, I was so pissed off that I almost missed the CDs arriving at my house. I had to organize everything through lousy internet cafes in small villages during my “army-breaks”. Mobile internet was out of the question price-wise back then and the phones were in the process of evolving from the snake-game era.

I recently uploaded the full “Ocean Dynamics” album as videos in my YouTube Channel and I thought I’d share some thoughts looking back at the album 8 years later. Here is the playlist if you want to listen to it in succession.

“Ocean Dynamics” was a very ambitious album. It was a demanding process to organize the recordings that involved a bigger choir and inviting DC Cooper and Alex Holzwarth to my home-studio.

A frustrating aspect of the album was that I had just lost the support of my former record label who had filled for bankruptcy. This meant that I had to re-evaluate the way I thought about the business side of music making. Going solo and do-it-yourself was the easy choice for a control-freak like me but in retrospect I wish I had more support both financially and from a marketing perspective.

The album was artful and exotic. Maybe this is why it never gained commercial interest from bigger labels. I don’t think there is another artist or album that you could compare it with. I like to believe that this is true for my whole discography.

“Ocean Dynamics” still “hides” a lot of Dol Theeta inside it. The album is atmospheric with emotional and cinematic compositions. It was apparent that a new project was underway and that some kind of “mitosis” would happen soon.

A funny trivia regarding the album was that the short story of the “Thalassa Dominion” was written by none other than Dol Kruug’s mr Jorgen himself.

The “Thalassa Dominion” opus was a single song in the beginning that kept getting bigger and bigger. I remember I couldn’t stop adding ideas on top of each-other. At one point I was considering to produce the whole album as one huge song. (Do I have “commercial suicide” written all over me?)

DC Cooper’s phenomenal performance on “Aquatic Majesty” (and on “Winds Of The Sun” later) was a highlight in the album. However listening to it years afterwards made me realize that it is something I probably don’t want to repeat. I mean the solo singer guest part. I prefer the choir to stay the main focus in Dol Ammad.

The production process for “Ocean Dynamics” was the most tiresome of any other album I’ve worked with. It took me and my partner Argystream more than a year and a half to finalize everything in the album. It was a total overkill, weeks searching for the perfect snare sound etc. This was a huge learning process regarding music production for me. I feel I have matured so much after that album both technically and also knowing when to stop!

“Ocean Dynamics” was a pivotal moment in my career and I am very proud of the result regardless of the difficulties I was facing at the time. It is more of an “experience” than a regular collection of songs and I can’t seem to put it down as soon as the first track begins, I have to reach all the way to the end.

An unfulfilled dream for “Ocean Dynamics” is a potential vinyl release. I can almost see it, an amazing blue-color with splatters vinyl! And maybe some new updated artwork? If only I had the budget…Would you be interested in something like this? Do you think I should crowd-fund an “Ocean Dynamics” LP? Please let me know in the comments or email if you’d be interested. Thank you to all Dol Ammad supporters through the years! You keep my creativity flowing! If you don’t have it, check out Ocean Dynamics at our shop.