Elegi

Elegi, the project of Norwegian composer Tommy Jansen, coined a haunting form of digital chamber music for instruments, noise and field recordings on Sistereis (Miasmah, 2007), ostensibly a soundtrack for sinking ships. Despotiets Vesen sets the (very slow) pace with languid electronic drones, melancholy piano notes and the most subdued musique concrete ever. Even less musical are the ghostly dissonant concerto of Fyrtarnet Part 1, with sustained cello lines slowly sinking in the warped lattice of noises, and its counterpart Fyrtarnet Part 3, dominated by the thick overtones of Klaus Schulze's cosmic music. The eight-minute Time Lapse juxtaposes delicate piano notes with his typical low-volume musique concrete of small random events, and its follow-up Spill For Galleriet (another piece that toys with time) mixes piano and ticking in a desolate, dusty soundscape. These longer abstract pieces share the quality of profound philosophical meditations.
Droning minimalism can go either way. The gothic atmosphere of Dauingene draws from dark drones that sound like drowning screams. The celestial atmosphere of Interbellum is woven from a rainbow of brighter and faster drones that seem to dance in the sky with an echo of baroque concertos (new-age music by Jansen's standard). Somewhere between the two extremes lie the distorted psychedelic vertigoes of Fyrtarnet Part 2.
Humane tones are rare. The confused rumble of Sistereis hides a lugubrious melody that eventually surfaces in the form of a fanfare played first by the trumpet and then by the trombone.

Varde (Miasmah, 2009), a soundtrack for the (doomed) 1912 voyage of Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole, was both less elegiac and less metaphysical while more tumultuous and almost neurotic. The stormy overture Varde evokes a glacial landscape but the violin-based adagio Skrugard is closer in mood to the existential angst of "Mitteleuropa" in the early 20th century. Elsewhere, the method was used for more psychological purposes, like to shape the terrifying suspense of Drivis. The quiet of Fandens Bre is disrupted by an avalanche of noise. The moaning and wailing of Angekok is ripped apart by saw-like strings. Jansen seems busy inventing an audio iconography of pain, a vocabulary of primal and almost pre-natal sounds.
The contrast between "concrete" dissonance and chamber piano reached a new level of sophistication in Svanesang because they seem to play to each other and react to each other. They definitely build on each in Rak, a schizophrenic game of majestic drones and infernal noise mediated by romantic strings. An arctic wind blankets the landscape evoked by Den Store Hvite Stillhet, perhaps an allegory for the entire story.

Elegi's Bansull/ Lullaby (Dronarivm, 2017) contains material recorded several years before the release. Somnolent, neoclassical-tinged free-form pieces like Hvor Her Er Odselig are the perfect soundtrack for a ghost story. In that horror vein, Mortemann has samples of opera floating in howling electronica, and Messe has a church organ converse with tiny noises betraying the presence of invisible beings. The seven-minute Vemod is instead a soundtrack to folly, mixing a slow-motion neoclassical sonata for strings with the crackling of an old record and chaotic cacophony (even the sound of someone is writing on paper). The unfolding of Fordum is even more insane, and sabotaged by lo-fi quality of recording. The sense of mystery peaks with the booming and echoing emptiness of K-141 and with the metabolizing rumble of Elevte Time that ends with the ticking of wall-clock; audio equivalent of Dali or Tanguy paintings. The whole is both disturbing and inspiring, just like the best surrealist fiction. The only thing missing from this music is a bit more depth.

By then Jansen had already retired from music.