A Closer Listen
This is an album for solo piano that stands out from the crowd. Joel Lundberg has toured as a bassist with Debbie Harry and Mumford & Sons and composed expansive modular synthesis ambience for the app Sleep Cycle, but it sounds nothing like that. Nor does it share the gentle felted aesthetics of much of what gets labelled as contemporary classical. It’s an album that pays subtle tribute to the impressionist soundworld of composers like Claude Debussy, Erik Satie and Maurice Ravel, yet feels fresh and full of life.
The album opens with a torrent of notes, heralding “The Flood”, a rush of water, repeatedly rising and ebbing. We are not in control, rather we are carried away to who knows where.
Dropped by the water, we must continue our journey. We see “Sparks on the Horizon” and we head towards them. They’re compelling, we can’t help but be entranced. We don’t fully understand them: what are they? At times we rush towards them, at other times we stand and stare.
We continue “Along the Waterway”. The water here is deep and dark. At times it trembles. We don’t know what causes the movements: is it the wind or is something in the depths? At first we feel unsafe, but after a while we become accustomed. In a moment of drama we realise that we should not have allowed our guard to drop and we feel a fear that quickly turns to wonder. There is moment later of extraordinary beauty (it starts at 4:30) but it disappears almost instantly as the trembles return.
As you may have by now realised, this is an album with a compelling musical narrative. It is not clear precisely what Lundberg is depicting so evocatively, but that’s the point, as the titles of the next three tracks make clear: “Deceptive Perception”, “Ambiguous Plans” and “Endless Dichotomy”. Lundberg tells us that the album is an “extrovert/introvert journey in nautical scenery”, an “inner monologue/dialogue”. Whatever narrative we impose—and I should make clear that the narrative given above is only what I have inferred from the music and track titles—it’s utterly captivating and it’s also beautifully played by pianist Kalle Stenbäcken. (Garreth Brooke)
Mon May 29 00:01:23 GMT 2023