Enhet För Fri Musik - Dokument 1: Improvisationer Och Bandmusik För Vilt Dansande Själa

These recent Aguirre reissues have been arriving in dribs dabs, and of course the one i've been waiting on most excitedly comes last. What sins must i have indulged in a former life to deserve such a fate? Enhet För Fri Musik are essentially ground zero for the current Gothenburg set, and the appropriately titled Dokument 1 something close to being its first key text. Much of what's come since has leaned heavily into DIY/avant folk abstraction, so it's interesting that on their first outing Enhet För Fri Musik were actually leaning in a slightly different direction. If anything, they were actually leaning backwards for inspiration, rather than into the future that in 2015 was still some way to come. A four piece then, consisting of the now familiar names of Sofie Herner (Neutral), Hugo Randulv (Amateur Hour), Dan Johansson (Sewer Election++) and Gustaf Dicksson (Blod), the sound they made on Dokument 1 seemed to speak more to the no wave/industrial elements of pre-Discreet label Release the Bats, while also incorporating a pronounced free jazz influence that probably marked the first significant seachange in contemporary Gothenburg music. The atonal aspects of no wave and the boundaryless nature of free jazz make good bedfellows, though there's certainly nothing obvious or route here. There's a hard-to-guess-at DIY unpredictability on show, certainly lo-fi, but also explorative and convention-shredding. The music they were to make after this was probably more radical, though i have to say that given the volume of folk-indebted underground music around right now, it's actually really refreshing to hear something as abrasive as this. I dare say many people heard Dokument 1 on first release in 2015, though seven years on it makes a sterling second attempt at sounding out of sync and, as a consequence, ahead of everyone else. Evidence, i suppose, that if you wait long enough you get there in the end.