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The Sound of Sea Animals is the psych/folk/rock project of one man, Etienne Chan Khan, whose first album, Fractions of Fictions, was released this year. Much inspired by films of the 1960's, Chan Kane's sound also echoes today's musical talents, such as: Beck, Stereolab, Caribou and Broadcast. He explains, "I've always been inspired by movies in my music-making; the way stories play out on-screen, scene by scene, has influenced the way I compose music. My songs play out like a Sergio Leone storyboard: there's what's happening on the screen in front of you, but there's also what's going on far away, in the mountains. When I write, I always emphasize something. There's the voice that's in your face, but there's always the background melody that, if singled out, could be another song entirely."
During his noise/rock days, Chan Kane’s played in several bands in his native Sherbrooke. It was after moving to Montreal and collaborating with Comme un homme libre and Sunny Duval, that he learned to play bass, and developed his own style. Today, he regularly plays with Le Kid and les Marinellis, still compose and play for Comme Un Homme Libre and work in studio with a number of Montreal bands, including Demon's Claws.
With a knack for catering to rockers, he also works as a tour manager for les Breastfeeders, amongst other groups in Montreal's underground scene. But it's really through Comme un homme libre that Chan Kane's project came to life.

"When I was a kid, I got a computer that I discovered I could record with, except I couldn't listen to the tracks as I added them. So I recorded onto cassette tape, and then laid down tracks by playing that tape at the same time as two or three other cassette players going at the same time. I never let anyone listen to those recordings." Where does the name come from? "The name? That's an interesting story… I used to have access to the equipment at my CEGEP's radio station, because my dad was a prof. They had a console where I'd go practice with a friend, and we would record onto tape. One time, we had nothing to use, and we found a box of sound effects tapes, that we recorded on top of. We used five or six tapes in that recording session, and the one we recorded the final product onto was called "The Sound of Sea Animals, Vol. 1." Originally, it was whale sounds. Then, when it came time to name the group, I said, as a joke, 'well, it was recorded onto that tape.' And the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would make a great name."
In the latest incarnation of The Sound of Sea Animals, Chan Kane plays almost every instrument: guitar, bass, percussion, sitar, and keys. Ultimately, he also leant his voice to the project and wrote lyrics. "Most of the time, there isn't any symbolism in what I write: it's literal and simple. I rarely use literary figures. It's more the overall collection of songs on the album that suggests a theme, since I try to connect them that way."
Chan Kane's sound echoes both current popular musical trends, and those of yester-year, using pop vocals and guitar, as well as cinematic choruses, inspired by the psychedelic sound of old spaghetti westerns. At long last, the hypnotic first album by The Sound of Sea Animals is here; Fractions of Fictions is set for release on September 30th.

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Name: Earth
Detail: Planet
TIM FLANNERY, an Australian mammalogist and palaeontologist, is an environmental celebrity. His 2005 book, “The Weather Makers”, about climate science and global warming, was a bestseller. His latest is his most ambitious book so far. The publisher calls “Here on Earth” a twin biography, of humanity and the planet it inhabits, but that description is inadequate. Mr Flannery's subject is the likely fate of humankind, and whether the powers granted to modern civilisation by science and technology will prove to be its downfall or its salvation.

He muses on whether humanity counts as a superorganism (a classification usually reserved for bees and ants), why we have yet to discover intelligent aliens, the poorly understood effects of dumping industrial chemicals into the environment, the power of planet-watching networks of satellites and the benefits of aboriginal scrub-burning. There is an effort to organise the chapters around two competing models of human behaviour, a co-operative, far-sighted wisdom that Mr Flannery dubs the “Gaian” approach and a reckless, ultimately destructive short-termism that he calls “Medean”, after the bloodthirsty enchantress of Greek myth.
In this section
Paradises on earth
Sacred mysteries
Outlook swampy
Getting inside the mind
The gospel according to Mark
Restoring Wright
The trouble is that the subject is far too big to fit comfortably into a book a little more than 300 pages long. Mr Flannery is a respected biologist with plenty of published papers to his name, but the book feels dilettantish, with a dizzying array of concepts introduced, briefly discussed, then dispensed with before the reader has had time to digest them. The question of whether modern democracies can successfully resist populist tyranny is raised and then abandoned within two paragraphs. A discussion of decarbonising the world's transport networks flashes by in a handful of pages. Fewer examples more deeply explored might have added up to a more convincing case, and an easier read.

That is a shame, because much of the material would repay a deeper look. The “Gaia” theory, which is the subject of the opening chapters, starts with the surprising observation that such things as the Earth's surface temperature and the salinity of its oceans have fluctuated remarkably little over billions of years despite, for instance, a significant increase in the power of the sun. James Lovelock, who first proposed the Gaia theory, used an analogy with living organisms, all of which can, to some degree, regulate conditions within their own bodies. The theory brings to mind New Age crankery, and some of the research Mr Flannery cites to underpin it is speculative at best. For example, he mentions a scientific paper that suggests that lichens, bacteria and the like may have been a driving force behind prehistoric geology and the formation of continents. Mr Flannery admits that the idea is “controversial”. But having shown the reader a glimpse of this fascinating byway, he speeds straight past, impatient to reach the next intellectual stop, while the tentative theory is simply accepted.

If the book is not all it could be, it is still worth reading, though less for answers than for its interesting hypotheses. It is healthy to be reminded of the various ways in which humans are influencing their environment—most of them malign—and to recognise that even in an age of high technology, our prosperity and well-being depend on our natural environment, which furnishes us with air, water, food and the natural resources on which industrial civilisation relies.