We often talk in this business of ‘atmosphere’ and of those who excel at creating it. High up in that particular pantheon is Denmark’s peripatetic Berlin, Belgrade, then Montenegro, now Vienna-based Nils Bloch.
His second album, ‘Brutalism by the Sea’, will be released on 19th July. It was written and recorded by the Adriatic Sea – nice work if you can get it! – and explores concepts of memory, ageing and the emotional traces left by both people and places.
It seems that one of the nine tracks at least one – ‘The more you want it to stop’ – has been released as a single and makes for a grand advert for the album.
Few people do ‘haunting’ and ‘ethereal’ – two overused adjectives – as well as Nils.
To the background of what might be chiming clocks in unison, in some or other picture postcard Swiss Alpine village, emphasing how “time will flow on” (the opening line) followed by what could be cinematic music for the wiley, windy moor scenes in this year’s remake of Wuthering Heights, to Nils’ unearthly, silvery voice, to the heavenly choir, to the cello (or synthesised version thereof), to the public intimacy (a deliberate oxymoron on my part) it oozes gravitas in a similar way to that Ultravox’s music, for those that still remember them. And don’t you dare say “it means nothing to me.”
Lyrically, I found its meaning a little difficult to nail and ended up asking – would you believe this – AI for an opinion.
Anyway, whoever the little bloke is, in his little converted bedroom office, that makes up the answers (I swear that’s all that AI actually amounts to, a load of people who used to work for Ask Jeeves or AJ, working from home), assures me that it “centres on the exhausting, futile nature of fighting against life’s painful patterns, highlighting that surrendering to our brokenness often provides more comfort than aggressively chasing forced redemption.”
That’ll do nicely.
It’s not so much the meaning as the way he arranges the words. That puts Nils in the same category as the likes of Fiona Apple and Emmy the Great in my book. Right at the top.
“And while the nations they call
For faith and ambition
You only ask relief”
I rest my case.
Find him on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nils.bloch
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bloch.nils
