Agu & Tony Higgins – BYOHammer Presents: Embarkation (Float Away)

Agu and Tony Higgins’ “Embarkation (Float Away)” is an elegant touch that mixes dream pop, sound design, and historical storytelling. The tune was released as part of the My Grief on the Sea compilation, a collaboration between Bring Your Own Hammer (BYOH) and Dimple Discs, and is part of a larger effort to musically represent 19th-century Irish history and the profound significance of the Irish diaspora. It does so with kindness, atmosphere, and complexity of emotion. The track, which is built around a layered acoustic scenery, floats like mist over the open sea. Layers of atmospheric music and dizzy shoegaze elements move beneath the surface, offering the mix an ethereal effect. It has a handmade, cinematic sense that is more comparable of a memory than of a song. The vocals act as the piece’s psychological basis, expressing each word with the fragility and power typically associated with Kate Bush or Elizabeth Fraser. Her voice hangs across the mix, full of sorrow and wonder, adding a classic tenderness to the song’s historical content. There’s an ethereal sadness here, but also a strange kind of hope, like the peace and heroism of walking onboard a ship and leaving everything behind. Tony Higgins’ production complements this concept with beautiful restraint. Jazzy undertones offer warmth, while reverbed sounds bring the sound of the 4AD era—echoes of This Mortal Coil and Cocteau Twins are obvious but not unusual. A dreamy monument to a history that has too often been recounted in hard facts, now brought back to life with romance, honor, and a strong feeling of “place.”