Label: Kalligrammofon – Kalligrammofon #34
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: Sweden
Released: 1 Feb 2017
Genre: Electronic, Jazz, Pop, Classical
Style: Neo-Classical, Avant-garde Jazz, Ambient, Musique Concrète
More Sternpost, this time from further back along the chain, floating in deeper stiller waters.
Sternpost’s Ulrika, blink and you missed it, was one last year’s most interesting records. Combining lush, jazzy prog and frankly gorgeous fragmented art-song it was a glimpse into the secretive world of Swedish librarian and one-man-band Petter Herbertsson. If you did miss it, fear not, a repress via the sainted Concentric Circles label is on its way.
Meanwhile, we have managed to get a few copies of Statues Asleep, Petter’s first album as Sternpost. In contrast to Ulrika, it is a far darker affair, more lonesome, more bruised and more impressionistic. There is the same yearning voice, the same jazzy, filmic chords, the same sparse percussion and twinkling glockenspiel, but the mood is different. Purple, dark red or even warm black, instead of the midnight blue and deep green of its younger sibling. There’s an element of subtle collage, even concrete, at work, appearing more and more as the album unfolds. Structurally it’s more blown out too. Familiar song-forms and comfortable expectations are constantly being tipped off balance. Echoes of Robert Wyatt, Scott Walker, David Sylvian, the Clientele, Duffy era Felt etc etc. In other words complex beautiful music that keeps on breaking and reforming only to slip away again. (Mint / New)
Tracklist
A1 Adamant & Scissor Sharp 4:00
A2 Dim City Raincoat 3:53
A3 Breathing In 2:14
A4 Lunar Landscape 2:48
A5 The Wilderness Of Friendliness 1:34
A6 Extinct Star 2:06
A7 Kites Know the Ways of the Wind 2:33
B1 Statues Asleep 1:58
B2 Stepsister of Mother of Pearl 3:06
B3 Tap 0:51
B4 Sunspots 2:12
B5 Garlands 1:46
B6 Sapphires 2:13
B7 Wipe the Tears 4:59
B8 Afterglow 1:25
