Norwegian guitarist Ivar Grydeland has been documenting the world around him for the best part of twenty-five years, releasing albums on Hubro, Rune Grammofon and ECM as well as all his releases on SOFA. He lives on the peninsula of Nesodden and as such is surrounded by water, and that sensation seeps into the music he has made here.
Utilising, electric, pedal steel and Portuguese guitars along with electronics, his sparse, diffuse sounds evoke the lull of the surface and the mystery of the depths. The album opens with the long-form “Virkning Av Lysets Bøyning” and with the assistance of Slovak percussionist Michaela Antalova, creates a liminal drift of blue, a haze of mist on water with some sounds travelling obliquely through the depths while others are clear and pure out in the crisp air.
This slow drift is interspersed with electronic blips that act like a strange reset. If it were a record, you would be checking the grooves for damage, but here it somehow reinforces the sense of movement coming from Michaela’s subtle and constantly shifting rhythmic textures. At points we have drifted far from land, with only the delightfully diffuse guitar tones for company; but at all times we are guided by the percussive currents. The bright, light-filled airiness of the guitar-borne “Fordums Streng” is a brief vibrato-laden trip, while the geiger counter click of “Virkning Av Lysets Brytning” is indeterminate. The clicks seem to affect the hugely reverbed guitar notes, as if there were some symbiotic relationship, straining form the depths into the light. It is an interesting dichotomy between the two very different sounds with things just on the verge of disruption.The sense that the sounds are being coaxed into the open is very strong on “Ringer I Ringer I Vann”; there is a reluctance here, as if stuck and unable to progress. The steel guitar is almost unrecognisable and it floats in a sun that is so hot it seems to bleach everything beyond recognition.
The album closes with the succinct “Snyt Meg Langsommere”, which sounds like a muffled harpsichord, lonely and adrift yet ever hopeful. Ivar has a way of bringing his landscape to life in an unexpected and rather lovely way that briefly cuts us off from our worries and deposits us somewhere remote yet beautiful, alien yet welcoming and for that we should be thankful.-Mr Olivetti-
