Teahouse Radio - Her Quiet Garden

Number two in this week's Vyrstaete highlights reel... Teahouse Radio is the relatively new alias of prolific Swedish producer, Par Bostrom, a name you may or may not be familiar with depending on your knowledge of micro-edition, underground ambient music. Her Quiet Garden was originally issued by Cryo Chamber on CD last year, something you'll just about be forgiven for missing. What an oversight that would be, though, because this is exemplary stuff, beautifully rendered ambient composition with an unavoidably Swedish isolationist touch. Bostrom himself states the weather as an influence, which is inevitable where the cycles of days and seasons seem to operate in extremes - have you noticed how much of the seasons seem to bleed into Swedish music (e.g. the Arv & Miljo album S/S/A/W album series, the haunted summer tropes of Enhet For Fri Musik, Blod, the wintery snowfields of Civilistjävel! etc)? The titles of the tracks, 14 in total, spread over two discs, are both ambiguous and poetically-charged, not unlike The Caretaker or even aspects of early Godspeed (i can see that same lonely water tower on the horizon), and as with those artists, there's definitely a sense of a wider narrative being imagined into existence. The shorthand for this kind of music is 'ambient', which is fine, but it's also a little misleading. Maybe it's no less helpful, but this is more reminiscent of post-rock in both tone and texture, particularly the desolate, post-apocalyptic vistas of prime era Constellation (no coincidence, Montreal is a weather-determined city, too). Also goes well with: this week's Gothenburg Sound Workshop CD and the first three Civilistjävel! 12"s. Do note that the first batch we received sold out straight away, though we're waiting on a second lot to arrive by the start of next week. Super limited run, so when this next shipment is gone, that's that.