øjeRum - Cut Paper Flowers

A Closer Listen

Anyone familiar with the work of the enigmatic Danish musician and artist øjeRum, aka Paw Grabowski, knows of the deep and dreamlike auras he conjures with his prodigious output of music – and the arresting cover art he creates.

Using Victorian-era engravings selected from illustrated novels as well as medical and botanical reference books (think Henry Vandyke Carter illustrations for Grey’s Anatomy or Pierre-Joseph Redouté), øjeRum creates evocative Max Ernst – style collages that become startling, sometimes tormented, sometime ecstatic portraits and tableaux. When he combines them with the searching, otherworldly nature of his music, the results are mesmerizing. His latest album, Cut Paper Flowers, released on Richard Chartier’s LINE label, is a spellbinding addition to his body of work.

Starting with the idea of an imaginary garden, øjeRum draws in the listener with “Coreless Whisper.” Tremulous, ascending high notes on a piano, repeating in a tenuous cycle, mark a trail through a sentient atmosphere that pulses with sighs and gently heaving pads. Occasional wooden ticks and clacks suggest a human presence, but the atmosphere is undercut by random muted growls that indicate otherwise. As the piano notes fade, what sounds like a pedal steel guitar takes over while empty spaces between notes grow and thicken until the listener is left immersed in the silence of new territory.

The two lengthy central tracks, averaging about 16 minutes each, leave acoustic instrumentation altogether and plunge into richly textured, lushly electronic environments.

“Sine Garden” is a lowkey, nocturnal drift through a Rousseau-esque jungle soundscape of thick bass throbs melding with slumbering pads and sedated insect calls, while overhead, brief, high-pitched, glinting tones provide the scantest starlight illumination. The track fairly drips with humidity and the heady scent of night blooms, but nothing in its languorous unfurling feels oppressive or cloying – an indication of øjeRum’s multivalent skills.

Occupying a kind of xerothermic opposition, “Wound Flower” feels stripped down, arid, and sunbaked. With its layered, trebly, piping tones seared of any bass-heavy moisture so that they hover and waft and shine, it’s the soundtrack to the slow passage of the sun, radiating light and heat, as it passes over a glittering landscape.

Cut Paper Flowers closes with “A Shiver in the Reeds,” bringing with it a feeling of having come full circle. Like the opening track, it conjures an atmosphere through the layering of pulsing pads. But those same wooden clacks are more pronounced here, the muted growls now feel closer, yet more strenuous, more pained, and a mysterious rising whistle sounds repeatedly in the distance. As the track proceeds, the pads turn to synth horns and the whole thing slowly takes on a feeling of “Taps” being played at the end of a day. It’s an emotionally complex piece, something mournful and reflective that gracefully avoids tipping into despair, and an exquisite finish to an album that expands and extends øjeRum’s beguiling vision. (Damian Van Denburgh)