A Line: Align builds densely stratified layers of high frequency oscillations, grim textual vibrations and electric turbulence, which blossom upon the tapestry of a macabre grey slab with deadly force and a violence that becomes curiously seductive.
This work is more restrained than Ekelund’s previous efforts, presenting these grim existential metaphors through elements and a series of changes that are more indiscriminate, and which tend to establish droning, trance-inducing environments, rather than simply splattering the field with meandering patterns that play as a theatre of turmoil and claustrophobia and horror. Owing to this the unsettling elements stand as slivers in the skin of these works and make them all the more successful for it – it’s not always easy to pierce the veil of mystery and ascertain what this is about or where it is headed and this combination of frustration and curiosity – itself encouraged by the wealth of well-organized details – adds an important layer to the proceedings.
The tracks thus succeed positively and negatively, both for what they are and for what they are not: the thick, steady drone of “At Keiller’s Park (Summer 2006)” acts as a vacuum that is eventually cracked by minor eruptions of aural ectoplasm spiraling forth, giving rise to a new segment of more jarring, chafing penumbras, while in yet other places Ekelund drops out certain key elements or even works in pockets of (near)silence, toying with expectations with considerable tact and thus doing much by doing very little. “Allt Jag Ror Vid Faller Sonder” perhaps best employs this strategy; a continuous convulsion of negative energy, it’s a blank monolith of cold black sounds that act like a phantom pregnancy: suggesting much, but giving birth to nothing. In relation to Ekelund’s strong back catalogue, A Line: Align holds up extremely well.
Max Schaefer
