LARS
STIGLER – samarium-cobalt compound impulse-release magnets and linear
resistance inputs
(CD,
karate joe)
This weekend in the country the world was turned into a
greyish, cold shade of white that I had never seen before. It was not snow,
because there was probably two centimeters of snow on the ground and
practically none on other surfaces, it was frost. The low clouds spit tiny
icy particles of water onto everything they touched, where the water froze
and formed fragile fractals on all the surfaces of plants and objects. Then
it seemed that a strong wind had been blowing, because the ice formed spikes
that though chaotically all pointed into the roughly the same direction,
westwards. The spiky, shining white fractalized objects everywhere
contrasted with the grey, suffocating white of the low clouds that dimmed
the light of the sun like a thick layer of fog does, making the light eerie
and unnatural. There was no wind anymore, but the temperature still around 8
degrees below zero kept everything on a stand still. Nothing moved if it was
not absolutely necessary. Probably even the world stopped turning. It stayed
that way for the whole weekend and people said it had been so for almost ten
days.
Lars Stiegler (probably known from Mimi Secue
and Contour) points into a completely different direction with the
connotations he chose for his ambient sounds and guitar lines, more into the
direction of molecular physics and material science for technical research
and development, but his ephemeral, dreamlike sounds, where gently picked
guitar sounds interweave with layers of harmonic ambient sounds, fit so
perfectly to this atmosphere of a world drenched in thick, muffled white
coldness. During the course of the record the mood of “samarium cobalt
compound …” changes, becomes more dense and adds more power and
decisiveness to the mix. If it were a soundtrack playing in this kind of
atmosphere – I am enivisioning a kind of cold crime move like
“Insomnia” with Al Pacino and the midnight sun only playing in
everlasting white muffled fog – these would be from the opening scenes
towards the first hunts after the killer, when dramatic tension rises and
viewers / listeners have finally fallen into story and setting for good.
Within ambient music there is a certain kind of
aloofness, a feeling that the music somehow flows and ebbs outside the real
world, that makes it easy and common to compare the music to movies. The old
soundtrack in your head metaphor is always fast at hand as well as the takes
you on a wonderful trip into the outer realms of space / innermost realms of
your mind, is easily written down. But as much as I have used it myself in
the past (and probably will in the future) I always feel a little akward
using them. As if the music was some sort of second rate compositional
genre, with classical music on top on the one side and songwriting on top on
the other side, and ambient music always coming off as somehow “easier”
to produce. Especially, if it is good ambient, one that creeps into your
mind and changes your emotional state subconsciously. (I know that the term
ambient, the way I use it has come a long way from the liner notes that
Brian Eno wrote into his “Ambient#1: Music for airports”, and I don’t
give a damn.) Well, all I know that it is not true, but I am still working
on the resolve of that idea.
