As Pan•American, ambient musician Mark Nelson has gradually shifted through different phases of style and sound while maintaining the same emotional core of muted longing. Nelson was playing in the equally atmospheric band Labradford when he launched Pan•American in the late ‘90s, first exploring dark and dubby electronic landscapes and slowly expanding into more beat-focused pieces and then an Americana reading of his spacious ambience. Fly the Ocean in a Silver Plane is another shift for the project, moving away from the high and lonesome acoustic touches of his 2010s and early-2020s output into something that’s at once more playful and more serious. The instrumentation takes different forms over the course of the ten-track album.