[music] HANS APPELQVIST - Att Mota Verkligheten (Hapna)

[dot_fennel]

Beautiful, beautiful EP of ambient piano intermixed with 'found' conversational vocals in several languages. Each track has a different speaker (or pair of speakers) accompanied by Appelqvist's piano and other instruments. In places the people being taped are obviously performing, as when two Swedish kids break into a song in English; the label's website says the vocals are mostly people telling stories, but I sure wouldn't know.

What you can pick up without knowing Swedish, Chinese or German is the rhythm of speech, and how delicately the music follows along behind the speakers. If you've ever paused for a moment in your life to feel like the scene in front of you "feels just like a movie", and then reproached yourself for how backward that was, you need to hear this... I'm not sure I've run into any music that gave the structural considerations of soundtrack/ambient music (foreground/background stuff, the occasional use of voice -- I don't know, I don't like this kind of thing much generally) emotional weight.

Comments

[bluepapercup]

This is the first album you've written up that I find myself really, really wanting to listen to.

[dot_fennel]

Someone else has now said that to me too. I guess I should describe things more often, instead of talking about what *I* think.

(Or maybe I should write about semi-conceptual records more often.)

The interesting thing is that this is the hardest-to-find thing I've written about for a while. Which is too bad.

That's the second time I've done that to you in, like, a day, isn't it? Except this hard-to-find thing is one I could lend you or play for you.

[bluepapercup]

I would love if you would play this for me.

I'll even forgive you not being able to lend me the comic. :)