The first thing you hear on Opening, the new record from Swedish musician Klara Lewis, is a grainy fog of ambient noise: the sound of waves, a roadside or perhaps just the creaks and echoes of the room she’s recording in. The whining reversed strings that soon emerge from the murk create a wistful atmosphere, but then things take a turn: the loop clips and distorts with strobe-like intensity; after several minutes, it cuts off mid-bar, as though it’s been unplugged.
A deconstructed, shape-shifting approach
This deconstructed, shape-shifting approach is typical of the self-styled “sound sculptor”, who has been composing uncanny instrumentals from a combination of acoustic instruments and processed samples since 2014. As always, she imbues the harsh experimentalism with real feeling throughout this gorgeous collection of tracks.
On City, the lo-fi guitar loop and faint traces of chatter lend a sense of warmth and intimacy to the whooshing field recordings and churning electronics. On standout Vaknar, Lewis builds something soaring and beautiful, where the reverse tape effect creates a dreamlike wooziness and the high-pitched bursts of noise feel increasingly ecstatic, in the spirit of Joshua Chuquimia Crampton or early Arca.
Stripped-back and unshowy
Usually, however, she resists such extremes: most of these tracks are stripped-back and unshowy, with only subtle left-field touches. Despite its name, Hardcore is a slow, waltzing affair with flickering layers of looped instrumentation and twinkling effects that evoke birdsong. The 11-minute Tide remains horizontal, indulging in a textural slow burn in lieu of a climax.
Other understated highlights include Bud and Small Harp, both of which sit under the two-minute mark (the shortest track on the album lasts 38 seconds). Even at their most simple and ephemeral, Lewis’s vignettes build something rich and moving.
Also out this month
Horizont, the new record from Ukrainian musician Regina Collage, is a meditation on her motherland and her new life in Bristol (Do You Have Peace?). These 13 tracks are suitably introspective and intimate, as she mumbles languidly over home-spun, candle-lit loops that nod to dream pop and cold wave.
Curbside Lambsear are a new London duo connected to groups such as Caroline and the Umlauts (violinist Magdalena McLean also tours with Astrid Sonne). Their debut album Put Rings on All My Fingers to Weigh Down My Hands (Scenic Route) wades through grubby post-rock and experimental noise, with disaffected singsong-style vocals and a lovely viola section on the closer.
Doom dubstep, deconstructed hyperpop and free-jazz solos: these are just a few of the elements Tokyo musician Hakushi Hasegawa fuses into one cacophonous jumble on their new record Honest Feeling Album (Brainfeeder). It’s a disorientating, genre- and tempo-hopping affair, featuring a handful of comparatively sweet and subtle moments.
