It is
the Drone’s Original Twin, the echo of the Unspeakable Word that caused
the oceans to come into being on the first day and that made the dry earth
to rise above them on the second. Apologies to those who think we’re
purpling our prose even more than we usually do around here, but consider
for a moment the proportions of the creature who is singing (who we think
is singing, anyhow; more on that in a moment). It’s 67 to 72 feet long.
That makes it the largest mammal ever to have inhabited the earth, and probably
the largest animal ever to walk, fly or swim among us, period. The clicks
and high-pitched squeaks of the killer whale are one thing; the long, lowing
moans of the right whale are another; and then there are these. I’m
from California, where we use the word “awesome” to describe even
the mildest of pleasures, but this stuff is “awesome” as Jonathan
Edwards might have meant it: enormous, humbling, and practically incomprehensible.
Nothing I could say about these sounds would be up to the task of conveying
just how killer a case of the shivers they will give you. Better to let
the uncredited authors of this wonderful LP’s liner notes do the job
for me. They write:
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