Cassette
For the second week in a row we're blessed with new output from Early Music, the recently formed outfit headed by Jon Collin in which he's sometimes but not always joined by others from the surrounding Swedish underground. Old Strings arrives typically free of context, and with the very real possibility that Collin is performing alone here (and apologies for not crediting the potential involvement of others), and with it begs the question of why the shift to the use of a new moniker. Collin has made enough music over the past decade+ so as to be instantly recognisable, and this five song collection is in possession of many of his trademark inspirations and explorations. Early Music - Old Strings is a beautifully circular nomenclature, one which accurately captures the intersection of trad. folk formulations and cascading strings of various origin and form. We use the phrase 'time-dilated' to describe so much modern music now, though rarely music of this kind, though i think that's the effect Collin is managing to create, sliding between contexts and eras, where the contemporary confronts tradition, borrows its secrets, renders its truths anew. The results are transportative, wistful, and strangely moving, confessing of a weltschmerz as old as a the air that moves these strings.
FFO: Old Saw, Six Organs of Admittance, Flaer, Blue Lake
