Tor Lundvall — Empty City
Lundvall has also released several albums of electronic music over the last ten years. He began with more pop orientated songs but his recent output has been in a looser more ambient style. Empty city continues in this vein.
Scrap yard is the first track on the album and what strikes you immediately is the depth and space in the sound. Muffled chiming electronics mix with wind like drones and half heard rhythms. It’s almost as if half the sound is suspended in air, creating a very immersive atmosphere that draws you in far quicker than most minimal ambient music. Lundvalls sound takes a very picturesque approach to composition (not surprising for someone who spends most of his time painting) there are elemental sounds that could be trains, crowds or wind in the trees, and these elements are mixed with subtle and very organic sounding electronic textures. There are beats but they are shrouded in reverb and blend in with all the other aspects of the sound. Platform #3 is a slower more concrete song where a wavering tone is built upon by unidentifiable cracks and bumps. Short bursts of melody drip out of the mix insuring that the song never falls into dirge territory.
Running Late is the first track that uses Lundvalls voice. It’s chanting more than singing and like everything on this album blends in becoming just another part of the sound rather than standing out in the mix. This track has perhaps a hint of dark ambient in it but not in a silly cold meat industry way, Lunvall is far more of a composer and I would place his approach more in line with Eno, Harold Budd or even the more sedate moment of Susumu Yokota.
Early hours is another stand out piece that really comes across like being in a city centre in the early hours of the morning. Empty lonely just the hum of the street lights and the occasional shadow moving across the concrete. Grey water features a distant tolling bell above droning synths and shards of choral noise. Desolate is a word that comes to mind. The title track is a pastoral drift that sums up the album as a whole, slowly revolving and minimal melody and depth of sound. Such care has been taken to lay every element in it’s place so every song is a self contained sound picture of an imaginary landscape in the mind of Lundvall. Open Window is my favourite track on the album being that it features piano and bird song. Perhaps straying slightly from the theme of an empty city but no less engaging it throbs and rolls through a jubilant landscape of simple rhythm and melody. Otherworldly tones rise from the mix like scenes in a half remembered dream. Gone before the memory has time to take hold.
If I were to have one gripe it would be that the music is still in this format of a three minute pop song. Everything unfolds and then comes to competition within the allotted time frame. This for me is odd considering Lundvalls obvious talent of constructing absorbing collages of tone and texture. It would be nice to hear him try composing a piece that evolves and grows over ten minutes plus allowing the listener extended time to fall into his sound world. Where I think this music excels is in its capacity to stay focused. For an album of 12 short ambient songs it would be easy for Lundvall to start moving off in strange directions for fear of producing an album that was too samey. But with his well chosen sound pallet he has been able to craft 12 songs of unique identity and power. Certainly one to watch in contemporary ambient music. Only time will tell whether he has the skill and flexibility to push his sound into the next level and join the ranks of Biosphere, Budd, Eno, Yokota and the rest, but with this offering he is certainly on the way.