Øyvind Torvund — The Exotica Album
The Exotica Album is as the title might suggest, commercial and soundtrack music from a more innocent time: lush strings, mallet percussion and harp glissandos portraying an idyllic future world which never came... A world in which technology had cured humanity's problems and left the average family content and secure within a life of leisure. It is the sound of one generation's collective hallucination of soon-to-be-attained paradise.
In spirit it is the more tuneful cousin to touch-in-cheek albums like Nurse With Wound's Sylvie & Babs High-thigh Companion, which was a parody of 1940's and 50's marketing. Rather than pointing out the absurdity of yesteryear, this album highlights its carefree, optimistic outlook, and seeks to re-explore the depth and color of psychedelic and early electronic era orchestral scores.
Impressively, Torvund's orchestrations have matched the confidence and tonal coherence of classic orchestral scores. The finer details of orchestration are carefully attended to, as many a subtle complex rhythmic flourish can be heard tucked beneath the melody, which displays impressive harmonization itself, and usage of elastic meter. He has captured the masterful emotive clarity of the best classical music, with the sense of enchantment and fairytale conveyed by Debussy or Ravel. Flitting from each chord to another, we are swept through a pastoral landscape in unencumbered flights of fancy.
It's not unlike a scene from a vintage Star Trek episode in which the crew suddenly stumbles upon a glittering oasis filled with lush greenery, or the scene of Journey to the Center of the Earth when our travelers happen upon a cave room covered in massive crystals. This mood of dazzling wonderment has been thoughtfully extended by Torvund across the entire recording.
I especially enjoy clever touches like the use of mellotron and lazer-like modular synth effects, as well as something that sounds like a chorus of people whistling together (appearing in both the album intro "Ritual I" and its reprise halfway through the album). With a world of content within the tonalities of the orchestration alone, Torvund still does not shy from incorporating even more detail within the periphery of his work. This is one of the most incredible recordings I've ever heard.