(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
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.
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