Exposé Online banner

Exposé Online

Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Arin Aksberg — Nordic Patterns
(Projekt no#, 2024, DL)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2024-02-04

Nordic Patterns Cover art

The follow-up to Aksberg’s 2023 debut album It Flows Between Us is a powerful and mysterious work that combines elements of floating ambient and neo-classical into a beautiful and shimmering conceptual whole. Using piano, synthesizers, and plenty of studio processing, Aksberg uses the nine instrumental tracks at hand to convey the story of a major chunk of his life, when at the tender age of nine he moved from Alta, in the far north of Norway, north of the arctic circle, to the southern part of the country, where he remained for many years. Nordic Patterns is a story of his journey home, back to the beauty of the far north after many years away, which also corresponds to the ending of an eight-year relationship. Bookended by “A Time Given” and “A Time Spent (Anja)” are titles that document the journey, like “Leaving Home,” “A Look Back” and ”Homecoming” (on which Sam Rosenthal guests), and also titles that convey the panoramic and picturesque beauty of Aksberg’s far northern homeland, titles like “Cut Fjord,” “Flowing River,” “Skaidi,”  and “The Chapel.” The colorful and textural sound sculptures bear unique emotions that fill the listener’s imagination with curiosity and wonder, often with sequenced undercurrents and flowing cloudlike drifts of shimmering color and beauty. Each piece is different but all contain the emotion and dreamlike atmospherics that float in and out of the psyche as each piece proceeds. This isn’t what would be considered sleepy music, Aksberg has far too much going on both structurally and in the contours of the sound to be taken as pure floating ambient music, instead opening doors into a neo-impressionist soundworld.

Filed under: New releases, 2024 releases

Related artist(s): Sam Rosenthal / As Lonely as Dave Bowman, Arin Aksberg

More info
http://projektrecords.bandcamp.com/album/nordic-patterns

 

What's new

These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.