Following the enchanting release Gwethilu: Songs for the Dark Lake by Timoteo Carbone Hansson – a beguiling admixture of Nordic folk traditions, new age and fourth world ambiances plus swelling or cascading polyphonies drawn from the instruments and notations of early music – here comes another standout from the Gothenburg label Discreet Music over two beguiling sides which in typical summer fashion are full of playful experimentation and a kind of languid yet companionly drift.
A series of short and overlapping sketches, on the Swedish-Danish compendium Stilla Dagar, Stilla Nätter/Stille Dage, Stille Nætter there is some convivial vamping on piano keys which at times evokes the music hall or even lullabies for their simple and tender music box melodies. There are smeared drones and shunts or pulses of brass and reeds – the kind of sounds that might come from puffs of saxophone or the bellows of an accordion and their related fingerings – jingling bells and other clanking or shrugging percussions and gently oscillating synths. And there are fields recordings of people walking up stairs and overheard snippets of conversation plus some spoken word about being haunted by ‘the ghost of a flower’.
In short Stilla Dagar, Stilla Nätter/Stille Dage, Stille Nætter offers a charming melange at some remove from the listener because the musical elements seem to be just one aspect of a shared evening between friends. In other words the music sounds like the focus of a gathering rather than its purpose. And we gaze on as if through an archway or a door left ajar as Stilla Dagar, Stilla Nätter/Stille Dage, Stille Nætter conjures all sorts of redolences: the song ‘Every Day a Little Death’ from Stephen Sondheim’s romance A Little Night Music; the Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night which inspired Sondheim but also his Wild Strawberries or the Whit Stillman comedy Metropolitan and other liminal cinematic fare; a personal favourite by the musicians Miaux and Lieven Martens who played the Pels organ and Hemony carillon at St. Catherine’s Church in Hoogstraten; the album Aunes by Judith Hamann which documented a hillside walk to an outdoor mass in the Tuscan village of Chiusure and other more cloistered works for cello, organ and synthesizer; and Radis by the trio of Andrea Giordano, Kalle Moberg and Jo David Meyer Lysne from earlier this year which mixes together high-spirited Piedmontese vocals with accordion drones and the sharper tones of an organetto plus abrasions from prepared guitar and the odd snare.
There is something enchanting about all of it. Stilla Dagar, Stilla Nätter/Stille Dage, Stille Nætter is the work of the Swedish and Danish musicians Gustaf Dicksson, Post-Tragic, Sonja LaBianca and Frida Johanne.
