Continuing our attempt to chip away at the barrage of releases on 22nd August (and more are coming this Friday, 29th) – with some shorter reviews.
Automatism – Sörmland (title track from album)
I often blanch when I see a 10 minute long or more track, especially when it’s an instrumental. Often they just wander off to nowhere in particular, whatever the style, and I don’t get the point of it all.
But this week I’ve been so taken by the Auri track, ‘A boy travelling with his mother’, from their latest album, which is 11 minutes long and which I could listen to forever, that I just had to check out the also 11-minute title track of the album ‘Sörmland’ by Automatism and what a pleasant ride it was, too.
For those that don’t know Sörmland (or Södermanland to give it the full name), is an historical province on the south eastern coast of Sweden, roughly to the west and southwest of Stockholm and including an impressive number of centuries-old castles.
Guitarist Hans Hjelm says “This being the title track, we feel it represents the essence of the album. It is based on an improvisation (as are some of the other songs), with bits of the melody added in later. In the old chapel where we recorded, there is a grand piano and we all agreed that would be the perfect sound for this melody. The last thing you hear in this song and on this album is Mikael (Tuominen, the bass player) releasing the foot pedal of the piano, after finishing the melody.”
While Auri’s effort rises and falls and rises again, Automatism’s strategy is to build from a gentle strummed acoustic guitar opening that misleadingly suggests a folk ballad on its way to something that could be a Swedish equivalent of ‘Tubular Bells’.
Along the way it morphs into soft rock dominated by jangly, piercing guitar notes and from about halfway through into what I can best described as jazz-rock fusion in which a sax is ridden like a bucking bronco and concluding in a wall of sound that would do Phil Spector or Trevor Horn proud before it plays itself gently out again having come full circle.
It’s one hell of an improvisation and what could happen live is mind boggling.
Incidentally, the album (more correctly an EP I suppose, at five tracks), also includes two covers – a doom-laden ‘Laura Palmer’s Theme’ for Twin Peaks fans and one of Kraftwerk’s ‘Neon Lights’ for those of a more robotic nature.
Find them on:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/automatismband
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/direct/t/17845448121117052/
Bandcamp: https://automatismband.bandcamp.com/
Isobel – Put Yourself Down (single)
Another slow burner comes from Stockholm based Isobel (Isabel Sondén, John Bergevald and Filip Sjölander) who have apparently been around as a band for almost a decade but who have suffered from a collective lack of self-confidence until their previous single, ‘Ally’, which was also their debut one, was picked up in the US and later by student radio in Sweden.
That prompted them to seize the moment and record a meatier follow up which is ‘Put Yourself Down’.
That sounds more than a little self destructive but the combination of what sounds like an even more exploratively minimalist Neil Young (we love oxymorons at NMC) exercising his right to call a friend to help extract him from writer’s block more than justifies the pain.
A music video directed by Ania Grinberg will be released this Thursday, 28th August. I’ve seen it. Again, as minimal as it gets and probably cost about a fiver for a sandwich but worth watching all the same.
A full EP is expected in November – if everything goes as planned. But it rarely does in their case.
Find them on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iso____bel
