Foxy Digitalis
After his glorious “Sistereis” album from 2007 Tommy Jansen, aka Elegi,
returns with his second album for Miasmah. “Varde” is, again, an
immensely atmospherical album but this time it’s not about shipwreck
but about polar explorers and the sublime environment into which they
advance, aspiring to reach the pole first. I don’t think the album
narrates any explorer’s particular story. There are documents printed
in the booklet (designed, as always with Miasmah releases, by labelhead
Erik Skodvin (aka Svarte Greiner)) and there’s what I take to be an
authentic historical audio document that features heavily in the final
track, “Den Store Hvite Stillhet”. But these seem to be about different
journeys, shifting the focus from narrative to stasis, ambience,
landscape. And to the melancholy induced by the explorers’ hubris.
In true keeping with the label’s sound aesthetics, “Varde” is crackling
throughout, employing field recordings to evoke images and fragments of
narrative: a child mysteriously wailing across the icy landscapes; a
shovel being used to – pitch camp, maybe? Or to build one of the cairns
that the title track alludes to (for that’s the meaning of the
Norwegian word “Varde”). Four minutes into the album, Jansen’s widened
scope becomes apparent when grandiose strings elevate the daring
trespassers into the hostile landscape they’re unlikely to leave again.
While “Sistereis” was a naval fantasy conceived in the composer’s mind
alone, “Tonmeister” Jansen uses four players now to add violin, saw,
percussion, double bass, thus giving the album a symphonic quality
lacking from the debut. Doom is everywhere, but it is white. Hostility
looms, but it is beautiful. As a consequence, “Varde” is organic, but
cold, beautiful but keeping the listener at a distance while it warily
follows the voyager’s cairns into the barren terrain. Once “Den Store
Hvite Stillhet” (“The Great White Quiet”) is reached, no human steps,
no crackling ropes, no sleds can by heard anymore. Instead, a voice
over crackling static. Combining modern composition and a barren
variant of ambient, “Varde” is yet another triumph for Skodvin’s
Miasmah imprint. 9/10-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Silent Ballet
There appear to be countries in which life unreels in slow motion as low temperatures
become some sort ofraison
d'être. Among these is Norway, whose Elegi, aka Tommy
Jansen, returns after two years of silence with Varde, a kaleidoscope of
arctic stillness, hushed anxieties and endless expeditions to unknown realms. At
the other end of the spectrum, there are the melodious qualities Jansen subtly
displays, but it might take you a while and a few good listens to gain complete
detachment from the serene thunderstorm of emotions and to start understanding
where the album’s refinement comes from.
The first shock one is bound to
experience is that Varde, unlike any other
dark ambient records you might have heard, sounds completely untamed. Its
intrinsic quality resides in the existence of every low level sonance; somehow,
everything you can hear is inscribed in your memory and there are no unfamiliar
structures. Feeble baby cries, an old vinyl spinning, a sudden burst of furious
wind: they are all part of a procession of environmental noises meant to induce
an intractable dejection. Merging these with frail touches of violin and piano,
Jansen manages to create a daunting and claustrophobic piece, anchored in inner
and alternative realities. At times, the instruments and constructed soundscapes
blend together so well it becomes fairly tedious to try to distinguish them, but
ultimately this needs to be the record’s intent – creating some sort of malign
symphony while abolishing everything of an unearthly essence.
The frustration that comes along with the first songs of Varde derives from the record’s
faux-cinematic aspect. To some extent, almost every instrumental album contains
in itself a collection of vivid scenes, images birthed in the listener's
imagination through delicate yet powerful melodies. However, this is not the
case here - upon hearing Jansen’s effort, all senses seem to fail. Most of the
time, it is as though you are walking blindfolded through endless spaces.
Proceeding is strenuous; you can hear and feel your every step, but the nature
of the things underneath your soles is uncertain. The images are equivocal and
cannot be seen, but every noise you can discern will root deep in your senses
and cue you to Tarkovsky’s world of watery symbols, where every glimpse you
catch helps construct a picture - a picture that in the end collapses. Varde has an authentic narrative throughout, but each listener must find her own way of fastening herself to the story. Now and then, a film roll reminds you there is nothing to be seen; everything is
being created down within one’s deepest senses, like spiraling downward through
a personal rabbit hole where every sound is transformed into an ethereal object.
Nevertheless, the next minute this surrealist display comes at an end, and you
can find yourself confined to four interminable walls again. If anything, this
is an ever-changing music, which eventually conjures the same somber finality.
It truly is remarkable how something so frail and loose can attain such an
evocative and haunting progression.Organic from end-to-end, after a few
spins Varde starts dictating your blood flow, heart beats and spine chills. Every note is like another disease; there is no cure; there is nothing to be done, but one must go on as the sense of desolation expands. For almost an hour, all middle ground ceases to exist asVarde puts you face to face with your darkest fears. This comes highly recommended should you wear a life vest - for reality fades, and sentiment takes over melody as the desperate cries and lonely howls segue and call Alice to mind, who had to reach the shore by swimming through her own tears. (8/10) -Diana Sitaru
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RA
Over the course of his two albums for Miasmah, Norwegian composer Tommy
Jansen, AKA Elegi, has proven himself to be as compelling a storyteller
as he is gifted a musician. His talent for imagining historical
instances of claustrophobia through a stylized and simple take on
modern classical music has less to do with composition, though, and
more to do with collaging techniques.
His latest, Varde, re-conceives the failed 1912 expedition
to the South Pole by the British naval captain Robert Falcon Scott. The
second installment in a projected trilogy, it's a work that delivers on
its devastating premise with intimacy and ease. Robert Falcon Scott's
body was found in a tent some eight months after he and his men had
frozen to death. He was most likely the last of his crew to die, and Varde
captures the isolation and fear that must have accompanied the British
captain as he waited in the cold for death to claim him. Jansen's
arresting sense of atmosphere and pacing takes the listener on that
ill-fated, two-year journey, following the mood of Scott's journey from
the eerie premonitions of its opening title track, right down to the
doomy, climactic intervals that recreate his crew's slow death by
album's end.
Throughout, Jansen cuts to the gloom of impending failure without
pressing the listener anymore than he absolutely has to. The attention
to detail is what brings this record to life. At Varde's
center are the same forlorn strings and pensive piano dirges that form
the foundation for most other modern classicists working between the
goalposts of Erik Satie and Gavin Bryars. But what distinguishes Elegi
are the interloping crackles of static, the old 78's siphoning through
big-band orchestras, the creaking boards, the muffled voices and a
recurring choke that sounds disarmingly like someone suffocating. The
results are closer to classical collages of found sound more than music
in any traditional sense. Jansen's mood rises up from the detritus of
textures surrounding his spare instrumentation, which keeps the album
from slipping into the over-melodious sentimentality that has a habit
of sometimes overtaking the work of some of his peers.
By album's end, you get the sense that Jansen's work rises above the
rest of the pack not necessarily through musical ingenuity, but more so
by cultivating a deathly complex picture of existential doom. Varde is one of the eerier commitments of human catastrophe to music this side of Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic.
One would assume that Jansen is aware of the significant likenesses
between his work and Bryars' composition because he's exploiting many
of the same cues. It's the records only nagging drawback, but it's
ultimately a trivial criticism given Varde's refined intimacy. No matter which way you look at it, this is dire, often intimidating music, as jarring as it is beautiful. (4.5/5)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Music Machine
Varde follows on from the dread soaked sea bound wonder of Elegi 's first album 07's Sistereis- but offers up a denser, more aged, textured and varied edge to the projects doomed classical meets grainy electronics sound. The
albums sound it’s built from atmospheric and heavy static grain, murky
radio textures and voices. Creaks, bows and all manner ship like
shifting and sea-bound sounds all to build-up a grim yet compelling
sonic back canvas. To which melancholy and doomed melodic string simmer
and slow down saws are added along with haunting piano pitter-patter;
all of which pierces and slowly moves over the tracks atmospheric
grain. The albums sound goes from hopeless and very doomed as slow
bowed bass swoon and descend around you as if you’re going down slowly
but surely with steel hulk of a Victoria cruise ship. To elegant yet
eerier and slightly off centre piano beauty-that seems to hint of some
approaching dread or an ominous shadow on a seemingly bright and breezy
ship deck ready to envelop you. Or graceful and slow moving string
swoon and filmatics that at first seem ornate and grand but slowly and
surely becomes aged and more uneasy like a ship appearing out of fog
that at first seems impressive and proud but as time goes by it agers
and declines before your eyes.
Through-out all of Varde there is a atmosphere which
pervades you can literally cut with a knife, but underneath all the
atmospheric and dense weight of sonic presence there are beautiful,
haunting ,memorable tunes. As well as clever compositional moves and
sonic juxtapositions making this an album that really grows and grimly
blossoms over time
Roger Batty (4/5
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Mapsadaisical
The reputation of Robert Falcon Scott has been so traduced in the
years since his grand Antarctic misadventures that he would have been
as well wringing the neck of Oates with is own bare hands, before
feeding his meagre purple- blue remains to the huskies. Assuming he had
brought any huskies that is, the useless old fool. The reputation of
Tommy Jansen, aka Elegi, is heading in precisely the opposite
direction, and at a far greater speed than Scott’s frostbitten shuffle.
Varde is Elegi’s second album for the Miasmah label, after 2007’s ethereal Sistereis. Varde translates as cairn,and with all the Antarctic paraphernalia littering the CD case, I wouldassume that to be the cairn that marks the supposed site of Oates’s
fateful last toilet trip. Filling in the wintry expanse with an expanded sound pallette, Jansen here delivers a rich and hugely fulfilling record. Varde opens with the sound of snow being shovelled, from a tomb deep inside cavernous rumble; other field
recordings - icy footsteps and exhausted mutterings - are strewn over
the remainder of the album. On album highlight “Fandens Bre“, huge cracklesubsides to leave a ghostly, Jeck-like choral melody hanging in the air, as if the voices were frozen in time. Varde feels more musical than Sistereis:
the weighty “Svanesang” and “Uranienborg” are pulled along slowly by
piano, a string section deliver an elegant coup-de-grace to the
menacing “Skrugard” and “Rak”, and drums pound out the erratic final
rhythms of “Drivis”.
Jansen has taken risks, and he knows he has taken them. Varde
may well be the finest release yet on the peerless Miasmah; perhaps the
achievements of Jansen show him to have far more in common with his
countryman Roald Amundsen than with the hapless Scott.
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Boomkat
Tommy Jansen returns with an album themed around ill-fated Arctic exploration, making explicit reference to the demise of Captain Scott's expedition in the liner notes. The title, Varde, translates as 'cairn' - a pile of stones, which traditionally carries associations pertaining to the marking of graves, and appropriately the whole album sounds like a chilling and uncompromising electroacoustic requiem, evoking a sense of frosty grimness and a funereal feel that's so in-keeping with the Miasmah sound. The opening piece (the album's title track) ominously merges the sounds of shovelling with a stormy wax cylinder crackle - it's as if Deathprod were scoring a gravesside sound installation, but for all the implied doom and gloom, there's not a moment of it goes by that isn't eerily beautiful. Following directly on, the bass-heavy bowed strings of 'Skrugard' demonstrate Jansen's ear for conventional composition setting shivering minor-key harmonics within a blizzard of dark ambient electronic gestures. Cutting through the murk, 'Arvesloev' introduces some stuttering dulcimer-like string plucks while crisp, arrhythmic percussive sounds lend a sense of nervousness. The track starts out with a quiet whirring sound, like the motorised rasp of an old film projector, only further compounding the cinematic feel that permeates the album. After a sequence of deeply textured low-end drone tracts (among them 'Fandens Bre' and 'Drivis') the eloquent neo-classical strains of 'Raak' arrive as a particularly luminous departure, shifting the emphasis from sub-heavy sludge to windswept violins in a seamless and emphatically melodic fashion. On 'Soevnens Kvelertak', Jansen combines loose exchanges between piano and strings (not to mention the odd wolf howl) with an old dusty vinyl recording of some romantic, vaguely creepy orchestral tune, all wafting around in ghostly fashion. Varde is a magnificent piece of work, transcending the conventions of the death ambient genre thanks to an extremely refined compositional approach - as haunting Nordic gloom goes this is right up there with the best output of Miasmah boss Svarte Greiner. Very highly recommended.
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The Wire
Norwegian Tommy Jansen Elegi, whose Varde is the second instalment of a trilogy for Miasmah.
Evoking a ship's doomed voyage, the first, Sistereis, was inspired by Jansen's passion for wreckdiving. Varde deals with another ill-fated journey- Captain Scott's polar exploration.
The crisp sounds of creaking ice and a shovel digging into snow opens the album, before the solitary wail of a violin takes over. Percussion, double bass, musical saw, piano and a brass band propel Varde to the edge of contemporary compositions rather than metal. If these two albums posit an Acoustic Doom genre, then Varde's dexterity and elegance lift it way above the often stodgy Dark Ambient sphere.
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Aquarius
"There must be something about the wondrous landscapes of Norway that
seems to breed some of the most epic, gorgeously somber music around.
Frigid cold and towering crags rising from the Arctic water, it's no
wonder Tommy Jansen, the composer behind Elegi, is a living example
of this Norwegian vision that never fails to blow us away.
Varde, the title of Elegi's second album in a trilogy from the
excellent Miasmah label, translates to cairn, a pile of stones
usually left to mark a pathway. Which is totally appropriate
considering Varde was written as an instrumental narrative retelling
the adventures and hardships of the first polar explorations. With
electronics, piano, quiet percussion, various field recordings and
lush violin, Jansen lures the listener into a world not unlike the
experience of those brave explorers: icy bleakness, uncertainty and
impending doom. Shimmering drones grow and subside, slow trudging
footsteps in the distance, cascading swirls of snow are lifted and
thrown about by the wind. Jansen is a master at crafting an
incredibly vivid atmosphere, evoking frozen memories of the desolate
north, gorgeous and inspirational. Combining modern composition,
ambient drones, and his love for Victorian storytelling, Jansen
offers up his most accomplished and touching masterpiece, a seriously
beautiful and haunting experience. Kinda like if Andrew Chalk,
Goldmund and Stars of the Lid met up in the Arctic to write an epic
score for the apocalypse. Super dark dreamy goodness here, we
couldn't be more impressed. Already we've played this a bunch in the
store, and really can't get enough of it. Varde is just one of those
records where you hear something new every time you listen to it,
subtle textures and details that surface from the constantly shifting
background. Highly recommended for fans of washed out midnight
ambience, similar to the dreamier stuff the Type label has been
releasing lately, beautiful melodies laced with a sinister darkness
that lurks just below the surface. Oh and, uh, just in case you
couldn't tell already, we REALLY dig this album!!! Highly
recommended, especially for fans of any of the other recent killer
releases on the Misamah label!! "
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The Silent Ballet
2009 begins with a spotlight on Elegi's Varde, the second in what appears to be a trilogy focused on everything that could be described as "endlessly bleak." Previously we saw Tommy Jansen diving through shipwrecked vessels, and now he's accompanying a team of "pioneer polar explorers" to some of the harshest places on earth -- I'd put good money that countryman Fridtjof Nansen is by his side. Nansen couldn't ask for a better soundtrack for the infinitely frustrating trek through subzero temperatures, hellish weather, and nagging suicidal thoughts. The press release for this piece comes with the boast of comparing it to Gavin Bryars/Philip Jeck/Alter Ego's Sinking of the Titanic, and while I initially laughed at that idea, the vivid portrait painted here is actually quite reminiscent of the Touch jewel. The year has just begun and already we've got a candidate for top album. This could be quite a wild year...
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Textura
Given ambient's fundamental nature, the recent
deluge in “deep-sea ambient” recordings doesn't come as a total
surprise though it's hard not to take note of the works' synchronicity.
Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic, which arguably kick-started the genre, has been joined in recent times by Willits + Sakamoto's Ocean Fire, Mathieu Ruhlmann and Celer's Mesoscaphe, and even Fennesz's Black Sea Varde
by Norwegian composer Tommy Jansen (aka Elegi) advances the genre by
positioning itself midway between conventional music-making and
evocative sound-design, with funereal arrangements for piano, musical
saw, percussion, and violin on the one side and a rich mix of creaks,
rustlings, slams, and natural sounds on the other. (admittedly more emblematic of the genre by title than actual sound).
The background story for the recording concerns the discovery by a 1912
Antarctic search party of the frozen remains of Captain Robert Scott
and two companions who were found inside sleeping bags inside a tent,
the three dead for eight months at the time of discovery. Jansen's
sound design powerfully conveys moods and feelings appropriate to the
subject matter: the isolation and creeping terror the three men might
have experienced as they stared death in the face, gradually realizing
what their fate would inevitably be as they gazed upon the barren and
unforgiving frozen landscape around them. During the unsettling,
fifty-four minute work, one hears excavation sounds of digging through
ice and snow, moaning winds drifting across the desolate plains, the
corroded tape recording of a speaking voice, channel-switching on the
radio between melodramatic classical music and clarinet playing, with
all such materials augmented by muffled strings, piano, static, and
crackle. The four musicians Jansen recruited for the recording make
strong contributions: often theremin-like in tone, Dan Cantrell's
musical saw deepens the material's mysterious character, while the
bowed creak of Ronny Sveen's double bass suggests a huge ship slowly
rocking against blocks of ice in “Svanesang.” “Skrugard” is rather
similar to Bryars' writing in the way that Meredith Yayanos's violin
sinuously navigates its way through the atmospheric gloom “tonmeister”
Jansen sculpts around her. Yayanos's plaintive violin also charts a
course through a haunted mass of spectral tones in “Råk.”
Listeners familiar with Sistereis
will recognize that the funereal melancholy of the first Elegi release
remains solidly in place on this second outing, prompting one to wonder
what particular subject matter Jansen will take on for the third
installment in his projected trilogy. Whatever it turns out to be, one
presumes that it will perpetuate his affinity for classical-influenced
“gloom” ambient.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
With Varde, Norwegian composer Tommy Jansen, a.k.a. Elegi, has launched the sequel to Sistereis,
attempting once again to investigate the tribulations of the first
polar explorers. Throughout the record, capacious echo, gurgling bass
frequencies, and morose string motifs evoke wintry landscapes, calling
forth the dual sense of loneliness and achievement that must have
burdened the explorers who crossed those landscapes. Solitary piano
notes resonate for seven, eight seconds, before succumbing to the
rippling of somber cello harmonies and windy atmospheres that
alternately whistle and moan. Ominous crunches bring to mind the strain
of wood, metal, and bone in extreme temperatures. Occasionally, a
shuttered voice will be heard in the distance, akin to the muffled
speech transmitted by a shortwave radio; and every so often, there are
heartbreaking dashes of warm, civilized sound in the midst of the polar
suites: “Fandens Bre” concludes with a shadowed sample of a military
march, while “Angekok” opens with the layered gurgling of infants.
As the album progresses, Jansen proves he is capable of a tableaux
of varying size and density. Some pieces have the expansive weight of
an arctic vista, like Anselm Kiefer canvasses blasted with snow.
Others, such as “Arvesoelv,” thread decaying notes over flat tapping
and scraping, bringing out the frightful intimacy of a battered camp
scene. Jansen’s range of focus, from the vast to the minute, points to
perhaps the cleverest and most thought-provoking aspect of Varde
— the inversion of the mimetic relationship between nature and machine.
The artist uses machines to represent the sounds of the natural world
and then employs acoustic instruments to imitate the explorers’
equipment. A clipped piano note, for example, sounds like the alert
signal from some kind of thermometric device, while the keening of
disguised synthesizers recalls cooing whales and the vicious lyricism
of the arctic wind.
This spiraling dialectic between nature and machine animates the
drama underneath the album’s frosty surface. Jansen, like the polar
explorers portrayed in his music, is attempting to capture a segment of
the world through mechanical means. In this context, the album’s title
makes sense. Varde, Norwegian for “cairn,” may be Jansen’s
humble attempt to mark the musical landscape with a small monument.
This hard, porous heap of songs may not look like much from a distance,
but its stark artistry can be compelling up close. (4/5)
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Themilkfactory
Elegi’s Tommy Jansen returns to the contaminated shore of Erik Skodvin’s Miasmah with the follow up to his 2007 debut album Sistereis, and adds another shade of noire to an already sombre catalogue. In the ten years the label has been around, in one form or another, Miasmah have carved a perfect niche for themselves by releasing some of the most haunting and dark music around, from artists such as Greg Haines, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Gultskra Artikler or Encre.
Two years ago, Norwegian musician and composer Tommy Jansen, delivered a first opus that paced up and down the desolated no man’s land between minimal contemporary classical music and isolationist electronica. With force grainy textures, created out of found sounds, and slow moving drapes of electronic sound waves, Jansen was drawing the outlines of a trilogy of which Varde is the second instalment.
Inspired by polar exploration, especially the 1912 Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole led by British Royal Navy officer Captain Roger Scott, which ended in tragedy when the five members of the expedition perished on the return leg of their journey, Varde is an impressive second effort by the Norwegian musician. Jansen weaves some particularly glacial soundscapes here, developing further the dense magma-like forms that he showcased on Sistereis. It is as if everything was intensified. The found sounds seem eroded by a long process of oxidation, the tones are more intense, and the overall pace appears even slower and more dramatic. To complete his sound palette, additional musicians provide layers of acoustic instrumentation, violin on Skrugard and Råk,, musical saw on Skrugard, Drivis and Fandens Bre, percussions on Drivis and Fandens Bre and double bass on Svanesang, and accentuate the organic feel of Jansen’s compositions.
The sound formations are so dense and tight that it is often virtually impossible to disassociate the musical elements and the environmental noises, but, on Råk especially, the violin adds an incredibly haunting and human touch to the music. Elsewhere though, the pieces remain shrouded in thick clouds of sound, with, at times, the lone tone of a piano, a sudden gust of wind or the distant howl of a wolf for sole focal point.
Varde, which translates as cairn, a pile of stones used as a monument, is as cold and inhospitable as its predecessor, but, somehow, Jansen seem to have given some of the musical aspects of his work more relief and definitions. While drones still form integrant part of the music, melodies, while still very much set deep in the mix, give out an occasional warm glow throughout.
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Normanrecords
If the new 'White Lies' CD leaves you cold and you are wanting something a bit more avant garde then try this CD by Elegi called 'Varde'. This is ambient stuff that reminds us all a bit of the Caretaker in that some of the noises are horrid but somehow comforting. Theres some beautiful violin playing on track 2 which is kind of the 'naughty' to Max Richter's 'nice', Twinkling pianos, creaking doors, the distant sound of horns, the build up bits in Talk Talk records, a disturbed child softly playing the piano in an empty church, cut up acoustic guitar, a horn sampled and then played back at random,the squeak of a violin. These are some of the sounds contained herein - we're all quite lost in this record and I don't even want to turn it off. Its on the Miasmah label and I'm told it fits in with other stuff on the label - i.e dark neo classical ambience. This record is really really good. Unfortunately I don't write for The Wire - I'm sure they'd explain it loads better
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Caleidoscoop
Erik Skodvin (Deaf Center, Svarte Greiner) is met zijn label Miasmah hard bezig ’s werelds beste, melancholische kwaliteitslabel te worden. Zeker als het gaat om mysterieuze muziek uit de klassiek getinte elektronica hoek. Ook Elegi behoort tot de club en heeft er al zijn duistere visitekaartje afgegeven met Sistereis uit 2007. Dit project van de melancholisch gestemde, Noorse wrakduiker en muzikant Tommy Jansen lijkt op de genoemde cd ook daadwerkelijk de meest duistere, desolate en mysterieuze plekken van de diepzee te verkennen. Daarbij maakt hij een mix van duistere ambient, veldopnames en experimentele en klassieke geluiden. Voor zijn nieuwe cd Varde, de tweede uit zijn doom-trilogie, is Tommy uitgegaan van het verhaal over de eerste poolexpeditie waarbij de deelnemers met gevaar voor eigen leven één van de meest vijandige gebieden verkennen. Je begrijpt dat hier een net zo desolaat, duister en mysterieus geluid bij bedacht kan worden als de voorganger, wat dan ook het geval is. Een element dat hier zeker bij komt is angst. Met duistere drones, doom en ambient schetst hij op adembenemende wijze de zware expeditie. Op sommige momenten kent de reis ook gevoelens van euforie, waarbij de natuurelementen overwonnen lijken te worden. Hier klinkt de muziek meer helder, totdat al gauw de duisternis weer opdoemt in deze bizarre tocht vol steeds weer nieuwe gevaren. Af en toe lijkt het alsof het ijs onder hun voeten kraakt. Tommy fabriceert dit alles met elektronica, veldopnames en pianoklanken. Daarnaast worden 3 van de 12 tracks prachtig voorzien van viool of contrabas door twee gastmuzikanten. Verder zijn er nog 2 andere gasten te horen op zaag en percussie. Tommy maakt ook veelvuldig gebruik van flarden van angstig klinkende stemmen. Je zit continu op het puntje van je stoel, want het is werkelijk bloedstollend te noemen. Denk aan een biologerende mix van SPK, Henryk Górecki, Svarte Greiner, The Caretaker, Jasper TX, Xela en Deaf Center. Filmische muziek die je meeneemt op een fantastische, ongemakkelijke tocht vol onbeschrijflijke schoonheid.
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From the dust returned
Elegi's follow-up to Sistereis is the polar exploration-themed Varde,
a gorgeous dark ambient gem focused around the failures of Captain
Robert Falcon Scott and other explorers. Improving on the style set
forth on Sistereis in every way, Varde is a cinematically poignant trip through pristine and barren lands.
Noticeably less heavy than the waterlogged Sistereis, Varde
brings a crisp new sound full of brittle footsteps and wide-open ice
shelves. The compositions have been fine-tuned with a greater sense of
direction, progressing smoothly despite the crackling layers that build
up. Piano and violin diffuse quickly in the chill atmosphere,
disappearing over glaciatic groans. Leather and metal creak under
strain; landscapes slide past in a shimmering haze. It's a delicate
vision fraught with unease. Take the track "Angekok" and its slurring,
reversed gasps - struggling and crying, a failed explorer, a lost
child-cub blunders desperately in frigid, desolate conditions. Or
"Rak," with its mourning violins set to the drumbeat of splitting ice.
Each song is unique and fascinating, perfectly aligned with the others
yet still memorable. Nothing on this album breaks the mood.
While the feel is certaintly differnt, this would go excellently alongside some Northaunt if you really want to feel the chill. Driven by a purposeful calm, Varde is a nigh flawless album; powerful yet tranquil, full of the majesty found in extreme cold. Elegi has set the bar high for ambient material this year. (9/10)
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Cokemachineglow
You have to admire Tommy Jansen, aka Elegi, for what he’s done on Varde.
Or rather, what he hasn’t done: the overwhelming default for this kind
of classical/electronic crossover has been to build massive string
sections aching melancholy and tragedy. Elegi, on the other hand, seems
primarily concerned with vacuity and space. No sooner does he suggest a
melody then it seems to dissolve back into the impenetrable iceberg of
his music.
There’s a political element to this approach, considering that Varde
(Norwegian for “cairn,” the loose stone markers that usually designate
a grave) is Jansen’s own memorial to Captain Scott, the British
explorer who made a fatal attempt to be the first to reach the South
Pole almost a hundred years ago. To construct a tower of sound, an
overture, to Scott would be to ignore what the expedition really
represents: a desperate suicide mission and the last gasp of 19th
century-style imperialism. Scott and his team’s death is tragic, to be
sure, but mostly because it was unnecessary, and because his attempt
was to conquer something symbolic: to delay the inevitable decline of
the British Empire as the world’s premier power.
Even on
tracks where Jansen embraces a gorgeous slow-burn intertwining of piano
and strings, what is felt most prominently is the rougher sinews that
tie it together, like the dusty 78 of some schmaltzy soundtrack to a
Hollywood melodrama that opens and closes “Søvnens Kvelertak.”
“Skrugard” features spine-tingling long, bowed notes, but they’re only
half as haunting as the silences between them. The Nurse With
Wound-like samples of a shovel hitting hard snow on opener “Varde” is
probably the creepiest and most overt reference to the theme of the
album, but most of the time the vast, ice-covered landscape is evoked
less literally. There’s a prominent sense of absence, with the subtler
elements in the background of the music felt more than heard. I can
barely describe what’s going on in the first half of “Råk” except to
say that it feels like a massive glacier held together by the thinnest
layer of ice.
There’s something to be said about the internal
logic of these tracks as well: on “Arvesølv,” the reversed instruments
layered over each other sound like the track is folding and re-folding
back on itself. “Drivis,” with its prominent—but still
distant—percussion, sounds like what more electronic-based free improv
might be if it emanated from a single brain; the strange duality of a
homogenous landscape that still operates according to the chaos of
nature as opposed to our man-made sense of order and continuity. This
remarkable sense of synergy is not achieved by rendering the source
material unrecognizable. The piano on “Svanesang” and “Uranienborg”
sounds just like an ordinary piano, but with an intimate relationship
to the electronics that goes further than similar ambient experiments
by Harold Budd and Ryuichi Sakamoto.
Of course, the lack of anything that immediately jumps out might be seen as a flaw of Varde,
but I like to think of it as a humble, painterly gesture that gives it
a sense of humility amidst the dark, existential weight of its concept.
Scott’s expedition—besides failing to make it out alive—reached the
South Pole only to find a Norwegian flag already planted there. It’s
easy to wonder whether Jansen, likewise hailing from Norway, holds a
degree of smugness in lieu of these facts, but Varde, despite
the near-mutedness of its human cries (“Angekok” features the faint
start of a child’s wimper or cry but mixed together so it becomes a
substantial force amidst the monolithic bass tones) is still
essentially sympathetic. Humanistic, even. Its source of sympathy is
more Herzog than Howard: not glorifying humanity’s heroism in the face
of nature but showing our inability to master it.
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Ondarock
Prosegue senza sosta l'esplorazione del norvegese Tommy Jansen aka Elegi, che un anno e mezzo dopo "Sistereis" offre ora alle stampe il secondo capitolo della sua cupa trilogia ispirata all'inospitale desolazione delle lande polari. Il tema dell'esplorazione – qui esplicitato nel riferimento alla tragica spedizione antartica di Robert Falcon Scott – rappresenta per Jansen qualcosa più di un mero vezzo concettuale, traducendosi invece in vero e proprio emblema di un percorso musicale inteso a spingersi verso inesplorati territori di sperimentazioni a base dark-ambient.
Anche in ragione della sua dichiarata ispirazione, "Varde" (termine norvegese utilizzato per indicare una tradizionale stele funeraria formata da pietre sovrapposte) assume sfumature di ancor più spessa oscurità, atteggiandosi quale sinistra elegia elettroacustica, incessantemente percorsa da plumbei flutti e sciabordii inquietanti, ma non priva di accenni armonici, affioranti sotto forma del perturbante romanticismo veicolato dalla profondità degli archi e di note pianistiche solo occasionalmente amalgamate.
Nel complesso, potrebbe apparire come una sorta di colonna sonora ibernata in cristalli ghiacciati di bellezza quanto meno sinistra; tuttavia, al di là dell'attitudine visionaria ricorrente in molti dei suoi dodici brani, "Varde" conferma l'inclinazione di Jansen a una tecnica compositiva incrementale, tutta incentrata su una stratificazione di elementi nella quale la stessa origine dei suoni tende a scolorare fino a confondersi in una coltre spessa e inestricabile. Per quanto field recordings, esili giochi di dissonanze, archi e pianoforte si intersechino talora ad assumere una più omogenea fisionomia di dark-ambient orchestrale (“Svanesang”, “Råk”), più spesso sono gli stessi elementi ad esaltare l'habitus spettrale di composizioni volutamente irregolari e in continuo divenire.
Ne risultano saturazioni armoniche di matrice neoclassica ed echi di detonazioni rumoriste, che anziché sfociare semplicemente in veri e propri drone vengono piuttosto giustapposti a note elettroacustiche in seducente moto circolare, come ad esempio nel caso delle ottime “Uranienborg” e “Fandens Bre”. In questi e altri passaggi, l'apparente evanescenza dei suoni riesce a sostanziarsi in maniera più percettibile in una marea densa e soverchiante, espressione perfetta del senso di oppressione e impotenza alla base del lavoro. Se tuttavia i paesaggi disegnati da Jansen e il particolare metodo alla base delle sue composizioni non differiscono sostanzialmente da "Sistereis", rispetto al primo episodio della trilogia, in "Varde" si percepisce una maggiore fluidità complessiva, che dona al lavoro un senso di solenne compattezza sonora e quel tocco di varietà - indispensabile a rifuggire l'eccessiva piattezza espressiva - qui rappresentato in particolare dal flebile movimento impresso dagli inserti cameristici e da note pianistiche in alcune occasioni relativamente lievi (“Arvesølv”, “Uranienborg”, “Sovnens Kvelertak”).
L'immaginario d'elezione di Jansen permane avvolto da tenebre senza fine, tuttavia "Varde" sembra indirizzarne l'esplorazione verso un'ambiziosa quadratura del cerchio, in grado di riassumere la sua poco lineare concezione della musica ambientale in dense sinfonie elettroacustiche dal fascino tetro.
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Dmute
"Si nous avions vécu, j'aurais eu une histoire à raconter, de l'audace, de l'endurance, et du courage de mes compagnons qui aurait bouleversé le cœur de chaque Anglais." Voici les dernières notes que Robert Falcon Scott écrivit avant de périr dans les neiges de l'Antarctique. C'est au début du XXème que se tint la course au Pôle Sud. Sa conquête fût d'autant plus convoitée que les nations, bouffies d'orgueil, affichaient volontiers les exploits de leurs compatriotes. L'expédition de R. Scott n'est pas celle qui s'y essaya la première, ni même celle qui foula la première le centre du pôle. Elle est pourtant celle qui marqua le plus profondément les esprits de l'époque.
R. Scott tenta, avec son équipe, de pousser plus loin la première percée de Shackleton effectuée quelques années auparavant. Il parvint à atteindre le pôle, mais pour y trouver le drapeau d'une équipe norvégienne qui l'avait devancé un mois plus tôt. Dépités par cet échec, lui et ses quatre hommes tentèrent de rejoindre leur campement de base. Les mauvaises conditions météorologiques, quelques écueils logistiques et une bonne part de malchance eurent raison d'eux.
Varde désigne ces monticules de pierre que l'on retrouve en Bretagne, en Écosse, en Irlande, et dont on suppose qu'ils étaient érigés à la mémoire des guerriers morts au combat. A l'instar des films et ouvrages qu'a inspiré le tragique destin de R. Scott, ce deuxième album d'Elegi s'appuie sur les notes du capitaine pour en relater l'histoire ; un hommage qui s'incarne cette fois dans un travail audiophonique. "Pour cet album j'ai invité quatre musiciens au violon, à la scie musicale, aux percussions d'orchestre et à la contrebasse" explique Tommy Jansen, l'homme derrière Elegi. Cette collaboration permit selon le norvégien "d'apporter plus de dimension et de couleur à l'histoire".
En résulte une collection de titres oscillant entre modern classical, dark ambient, et field recording. Outre les nombreuses évocation du blizzard polaire que l'on s'attend évidemment à y trouver, Tommy Jansen propose quelques mises en ambiance participant du côté narratif du disque. Varde introduit l'album à pelletées de neige, Arvesolv laisse imaginer les coups de maillet sur les piquets de tente, et ainsi de suite. Si l'on ne saisit pas systématiquement l'apport de chaque enregistrement, l'atmosphère dégagée est en revanche une parfaite réussite. Le travail mêle paysages et sentiments humains. On y devine le froid oppressant, la beauté glaciale des paysages Antarctiques, la déception que pouvait ressentir l'équipe de R. Scott lorsqu'elle se vît tenue en échec par l'expédition norvégienne, la solitude de ses hommes coincés dans leur tente, au milieu des neiges, et leur résignation à accepter une mort inéluctable.
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Ondefixe
Annoncé comme étant le second volet d'une trilogie couvée par le sépulcral label Miasmah, Varde a puisé son inspiration désolée et glacée dans une histoire centenaire au dénouement tragique : l'expédition conduite par le Capitaine Scott
en Antarctique, qui se solda par la disparition de son escouade, et
dont les corps furent retrouvés quelques 8 mois plus tard momifiés par
la glace.
Pour retranscrire le panel d'émotions ressenties par cette équipe d'explorateurs (isolement, peur,
incertitude, fascination, épuisement), le norvégien Tommy Jansen aka Elegi<