From Gothenburg's unceasing factory line of outsider sound comes this mesmerising debut transmission by the mysterious Eftergift. No idea who's involved in this one, whether they're an old hand operating under a new guise or a newcomer with preternatural instincts, but it's unmistakably a product of the same sensibility that's given birth to so much great left-of-centre Swedish music these past few years. While there's a relatively rich seam of elegantly fried tape music in Gothenburg's recent history (think Sewer Election, Arv & Miljo and such like), Vätten Över Vätten actually seems to dovetail most easily with a record that only came out in the last month or so, Midnite Blues, Gustaf Dicksson's collaboration with Hamilton Tapes' Shadow Pattern. Indeed, the Hamilton Tapes aesthetic hangs ominously here, that sense of frozen post-nuclear vistas, decayed ambience and lonesome expanse that establishes in simpatico ground between Canada's desolate northern plains and the bleak Swedish mid-winter. It's a highly evocative presentation, rich in detail and overtly impressionistic in that 'music for imaginary films' manner that reaches through the music of everyone from Muslimgauze to Zoviet France to another Canadian outlier, Korea Undok Group. Discreet and it's associated networks might have helped forge a context into which Vätten Över Vätten can be placed, but rarely do debuts sound so commanding and immersive, a genuinely expert example of world-building that's somehow also surprisingly musical and addicting. Discreet never seems to miss, yet somehow this is one of their very best in quite some time.
Mastered by Lasse Marhaug and pressed in an edition of 300 copies.
