Label: Discreet Music – 05 Format: Vinyl, LP, Album Country: Sweden Released: 14 Feb 2022 Genre: Non-Music, Pop, Folk, World, & Country Style: Field Recording, Nordic
More beautifully ragged sketchbook intimacy from FFFM alumni Astrid Øster Mortensen.
Astrid’s first LP from last year was a major highlight of a crap year, if you were lucky enough to catch a copy that is. In the end, for me, it was the one record from the second wave of the Gothenburg underground that really mattered. Delicate weird and heart breaking it was a masterpiece of hermetic ambient folk. This new record, while being less immediate, is every bit as strange and gorgeous. It’s a fully immersive and labyrinthine listen and it may take a few goes to get to the middle of the maze. I think the key to its appeal are it’s abrupt and beguiling shifts in focus and scale. Sometimes she seems to be mapping space and time minutely. Tiny microtonal details of clatter and hum are placed precisely around fluttering organ and strings. Then suddenly towards the end of side one her voice breaks in and with comes a ravishing pop sensibility that blows the whole record wide open. The best of Maxine Funke might be the only thing that comes close. No joke.. (NM/NM)
Tracklist A1 Igenom Livet Utan Att Såra Någon 4:11 A2 Styrsö Kyrkorgel 7:29 A3 Børn 4:08 A4 Hvem Er Det Som Stjæler Min Ungdom 2:02 B1 Smelter Væk 6:33 B2 Det Endnu Usagte 4:24 B3 Du Finns Kvar Någonstans 3:30 B4 Kunne Vi Være Lidt Mindre Skrøbelige 5:08
