Lisa Ullén - Heirloom

A Closer Listen

In Heirloom, Lisa Ullén moves between worlds and, doing so, disproves several commonplace fallacies. Take note of the cover image, shown left: it’s important.

Fallacy one. No matter how many versions of a musical piece exist, somewhere there’s an “ultimate” or “definitive” version of a piece that represents a composer’s intentions. Each of Heirloom‘s three pieces are presented here twice, with Ullén making the most of her first ever vinyl pressing to put version 1 on side A, version 2 on side B. The two versions were recorded on the 6th (side A) and 8th (side B) of June. If we follow convention and listen to side A first, the recordings of the 6th of June establish themselves in our minds as the “normal” versions. On the other hand, if 8th of June is more “definitive” because it was recorded later, the 6th of June recordings should surely be on side B, or perhaps relegated to a bonus collectors-only edition. Ullén demonstrates that there is no such thing as an “ultimate” version. There are just versions, period.

Fallacy two. Genre has meaning: classical works like this, jazz works like that, and so on. It’s appealingly facile: we put on an ambient record, expecting it to sound like what we think ambient sounds like, and then feel good because we’ve succeeded in not surprising ourselves. Here at A Closer Listen we split our music reviews into seven genres, but Ullén’s music could arguably be labelled as four of them (experimental, jazz, modern composition, drone) but if you put this on expecting it to sound like you’re expecting, you’re going to be disappointed. Even labelling it as experimental—which I have done because it is the most predictive descriptor available and ultimately I am obliged to make a choice—doesn’t really tell you want to expect. Ullén is at ease moving between dissonant jazz and what classical reviewers would call “new music” (which is itself a term that withstands zero scrutiny), and the third piece, “After Sun” is nothing if not a drone piece.

The cover art of Heirloom is the small box of possessions that Ullén brought to Sweden as a child adoptee from South Korea. Ullen writes:

This is music that stems from an experience of not really belonging to anything, of being in between identities and traditions; music that makes use of melodic and rhythmical fragments but refuses to settle within expressions that already exist, and instead lets the music have several layers where different textures and rhythms pass through each other.

This, then, is music about identity, but in its complexity, its coincidences and its contradictions, changes and consistencies, it is surely one of most honest and realistic musical depictions of human identity ever created. (Garreth Brooke)