Jonas Torstensen - Viser Og Countryrock På Fynsk LP + CDr

Insanely prolific Danish tape/CD-r label Afvikling Kassette make the transition to vinyl with this supremely lo-fi, low-skilled/beautifully intended collection of slowcore downer song by label boss, Jonas Torstensen. This is impossibly endearing music with the kind of winter's night glow that's probably just a natural byproduct of its Scandinavian provenance but makes it feel exceptionally well timed for the cold snap we're enduring in London right now. Torstensen's whisper of a voice also suggests it was recorded while others around him slept and soundly too, I'd wager, the lullaby-like qualities of these gently keyed, strummed and hummed half-tunes soporific, dreamy and warming in ways that would struggle to wake a baby (let's not ask what it might dream of). Afvikling is known for a more experimental output that operates around the intersecting fringes of home-recorded ambient, field recordings, and synth and tape music, but these songs feel like a very different kind of approach, something akin to those early Sebadoh 4-track recordings, a Planet Records demo or the NZ lathe cut sound of William Henry Meung, Campbell Kneale, Entlang et al. Which is to say, these are more intentionally 'songs' than 'sounds', their charm built into the halfway clumsy unveiling of Torstensen's intuitive playing. A beautiful sigh of a record that proves yet again that you don't have to be good to make something great. Handmade sleeves (all slightly different) with a bonus CD-r of material that didn't quite make the cut. Edition of 200.   
 
FFO: Sebadoh/Sentridoh, William Henry Meung, Campbell Kneale, Entlang, Hood