Genre: Ambient / Dark Ambient
In a world where noise and sound are sometimes hurtful and alienating, ' Empty City' offers an escape from disorder into a world of layers, emotions and beats. Tor Lundvall’s latest record, after almost ten years of his solo music career, creates with music much the same as he creates with his paints: landscapes full of fog and mystery, a tension without menace, a place that lacks humanity in its imperfection, but that is organic and industrial nonetheless. Perhaps the only difference between his oils and his songs are that his notes I imagine in grayscale, shadows and light.
His label, Strange Fortune, decides to file 'Empty city' under the name of ghost ambient. It is a good description, but it lacks the intensity his compositions can achieve. You have to think Angelo Badalamenti's ' Twin Peaks' or 'Blue Velvet' sounds and strip it of any feeling of fear and longing. Tor Lundvall world is warm and cold at a time; it explores reality through all its possibilities, but as an spectator, not as a participant. One can be immersed in its sounds as one can fall into another world of a permanent dusk and cracked asphalt, empty streets and inertia moving machines. There is no need for implication - you are not swept into melancholy or thrust into violence. You are a listener. You are the observer.
All the songs are short stories. A possible soundtrack for a certain moment. They are constructed through repetition and layers. Some of the songs are more rhythmic than others in an obvious way, but they all have their own interior beat. The title opens a possible reading for the images that can be explored through the sounds offered, but they are not conditioning in any way. 'Buildings and rain' gives you a percussion that could be though of as the sound of rain, or in 'Open window' birds could -potentially- chirp in the distance.
In 'Running Late' each note falls as a drop of sound into the music and remains suspended. Moaning and throbbing make the song an unnatural place, yet strangely recognizable. 'Early Hours' uses a base line that palpitates underneath a thick atmospheric layer, introducing short brilliant notes that hang in the thick ambience that he creates which can become even too intense. 'Platform #3' takes you into a dark place, where vibrations and their echoes construct walls and spaces with mesmerizing delicacy. 'Empty city' includes voice work in a purely instrumental way, creating perhaps the clearest and most luminous song of the record. It is followed by 'Open window' in which a slight industrial percussion is veiled under the vital sound of the voice - void of meaning but full of beauty.
' Empty City' differs from dark ambient as it is mostly characterized. It also can't be included under any strictly industrial definition. It is evolving and wrapping itself around you while you are listening. It is a journey one can take into the night, and wake up to in another realm. And it is a must for lovers of dark atmospheres and still summer evenings.
