The second of two new records this week from the inexhaustible Gothenburg underground, and with it the introduction of an entirely new name. Typically, there's little accompanying biography to shed light on who Astrid Øster Mortensen is, but on the evidence of Gro Mig En Blomst she's certainly a child of the same sensibility that's given us Loopsel, Monokultur, Amateur Hour, Treasury of Puppies et al, and it's the latter with whom she appears to share the most obvious kinship. Wielding an experimental hand, Mortensen presents a kind of lo-res debased folk music, built around piano and acoustic guitar, and coloured in with various swathes of static, hiss and field recordings. Sometimes it drones, sometimes there's lilting reverie-inducing melody, as if Mortensen is working responsively and instinctively. There's a very Debordian sense to this kind of music making, so linked is it to its (psycho)geography, dancing between the 'soft' ambiance of both actual sounds from the city and an endemic Nordic folk tradition rebirthed anew amongst this latest generation, and the 'hard' ambiance of the harsher Swedish utilitarianism of the structures that surround it (not to mention Discreet Music at its centrepoint). As such, Gro Mig... is both brutal in its starkness and beautiful in its unlearned, piecemeal wonder, and in its surprise arrival, does speak a little of how and why Gothenburg is producing the music it is right now. Edition of 240.
Note - two different covers, one on a white background, one on black (as shown).
