ØJERUM — Your Soft Absence

It is no great surprise to learn that the musician who calls himself øjeRum moonlights as a collage artist. Or, maybe, it’s the other way around? In any case, the smooth and seamless movements of the three long pieces that make up Your Soft Absence share a similar economy of part-by-part construction, but whereas the visual medium usually requires evidence of the fissures and cracks that make up a collage’s constituent parts, the sonic materials here are so organically held together as to make one believe that the compositions always existed as such. No, I am afraid – I too was disappointed to learn – the songs are made up of “sine waves and wind instruments.” And not to be too snarky, but what is the difference, really? On a playing field as level as the one achieved on Your Soft Absence, isn’t it almost old hat to make something fundamentalist about the source material, when, to a good oscilloscope, we are never the wiser when it comes to sonic “origin”?

 

The sine wave is a lovely thing, really. Filled with movement, but free from the harsh incremental shifts of its square and sawtooth brethren. Maybe øjeRum, in a quasi-truth to materials sense, was intentionally preserving that ur-structure of the sine wave – a gentle journey with no steep attacks or decay. Whether intentional or not, the feeling is lush, full even, without ever approaching kitsch, and I kept wanting to listen again to hear how it was that øjeRum managed it, while seeming so effortless. I can’t say that I gravitate toward the language and temperament of this genre of easy ambience too readily, but there was something ultimately pleasurable about the experience, exemplified by the luminous final cut (and the album’s longest), “Tomorrow We Commemorate the Falling Leaves.” If that title is any indication, it announces something to which I am normally averse, but titles are really just titles here. If you are like me, fear not. Strangely enough, øjeRum cites absence as a definig condition of Your Soft Absence, but nothing of that term’s formal implications is felt, at least not as this listener is concerned. Perhaps it is what øjeRum experienced when producing such pieces, and if that’s the case, get on with the absence!

 

For fans of mellow and amorphous long-form ambient works, who are happy to indulge in the process of never really peaking or bottoming out – sonically, at least. Very highly recommended!. For more info