Bj Nilsen
bj nilsen - The Short Night
Back in stock. Touch are a label that always put quality control above all else. They don't release much, but you can guarantee that when they do release something it's of an almost untouchable standard. They first welcomed Swedish experimental artist BJ Nilsen into the fold in the late 90s, when he was writing under the name Hazard, but 'The Short Night', his latest full length record, is for me his most coherent and absorbing album to date. Nilsen has been busy in the last few years, contributing to the incredible 'Storm' album with field recording veteran Chris Watson and also to 'Second Childhood' with cellist Hildur Gudnadóttir and Icelandic trio Stilluppsteypa, but 'The Short Night' feels like the masterwork these records were building up to. Nilsen blends environmental sounds collected in Sweden, Iceland and England and layers them above and beneath some breathtaking electronic parts. Taking vintage equipment (Sequential Circuits Pro-One, old Scandinavian generators, Korg MS20 etc) and recording and mixing using modern computer technology, he creates a sound that owes as much to early innovators Popol Vuh and Delia Derbyshire as it does more recent ambient-darlings Biosphere and Deathprod. The mood is one of grim, crust-laden darkness, something akin to being trapped in an abandoned building as an orchestra plays mercilessly in a sewer below - but while the mood is shadowy the sounds never becomes oppressive. Maybe it's due to the hypnotic nature of the compositions, or maybe it's the actual character of the vintage generators used, but the sounds float in and out of your consciousness with a wool-lined ease. Even as the album draws to a tremulous close with the incredible organ-drenched 'Viking North', the sound is still somehow washed with a veneer of melancholy and a palatable sheen that takes it above and beyond so many albums lumped into the same category. ESSENTIAL PURCHASE.
