Anton Toorell is a Swedish-Stockholm-based guitarist, producer, and composer whose solo work is centred around acoustic guitars in open tunings and explores playing techniques with multiple instruments simultaneously. His debut solo album, Solos (Ace Tunes, 2022), focused on expanding the guitar with electronic elements; Solos II focuses on documenting the full performances and processes, emphasizing the acoustic interplay in a resonant space. The album was recorded in a 16th-century wine cellar, a room with an intriguing, reverberant acoustic character, at the art residency Palazzo Stabile in Piemonte, Italy, in 2024 and 2025.

Solos II offers three extended pieces in which Toorell plays two acoustic guitars simultaneously, exploring their full resonant sonic palette, his own physical approach to the instruments, and the unique acoustic space of Palazzo Stabile. He explains: «The left hand is on the fretboard playing hammer on, pull off techniques, and the right hand is on the guitar in the lap playing mostly open strings». Toorell leaves enough room for unplanned resonance and happy accidents in these carefully articulated, reserved pieces, with their minimalist, cyclical oscillations and minute variations.

Each piece suggests its own conceptual sonic architecture, comprised of minimalist variations. The opening 17 minutes of «Volta» suggest a hypnotic yet innocent texture. «Cripta», with its stubborn, hallucinatory, and psychedelic guitar loops, references the minimalism school of American composer Terry Riley. The last and shortest, «Scala», is the most beautiful piece. It is an openly emotional, lyrical piece that reverberates within the recording space of Palazzo Stabile in Piemonte, as if opening up this space with its gentle vibrations.

Eyal Hareuveni

Anton Toorell (guitars)