Arv & Miljö ‘Svulsmen I Skyn / Essensen Av Denna Förbannade Stad’ 7” (I Dischi Del Barone)

Subtitled “recordings from a window”, this 7” on Matthias Andersson’s own IDDB label mixes conceptual and sonic content without pretensiousness.

“Svulsmen I Skyn” could be beauty or garbage, its vacant stillness and piercing bird cries reminiscent of both seaside isolation and a closed day at the local tip. I assume a coastally adjacent window is the more likely, but the emptiness behind the bird calls – accented by the roughness of the cassette recorder capturing the moment – hints at a more stifling or sinister unseen. From such a simple idea and execution, the mind wanders and thoughts swell: not what I had expected from the needle drop.

“Essensen Av Denna Förbannade Stad” converts a rainstorm into a spitting, clanking and urgent patter of noise, again heightened in effect by the recording equipment. Distant deflections, wind or thunder, and snippers of outside life all flicker through the piece for added depth, but it’s the subtly infused soft organ melody of the final minute or two which is the scene stealer, emerging as background ambience only to haunt the piece more closely as it emerges, then lurking scarily once the rain stops and its noise drops to almost nothing. It’s the only hint of composer input to the record, and it’s a devastatingly clever touch which has dragged me back to this 7” long after I grew tired of the ‘The Nico Tapes’ and ‘The John Lydon Tapes’ CDRs I got around the same time.