Sculptures From Under the City Ice is the second album of Norwegian guitarist Christian Winther in his incarnation as an alternative singer-songwriter (and his third solo album), after beginning his musical career in experimental, free-improv bands like Ich Bin N!ntendo and Monkey Plot. Winther keeps the same band that accompanied him on his previous album, The Clearing (Fysisk Format, 2021) – partner, keyboard player Anja Lauvdal, bassist Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard, and drummer Hans Hulbækmo and adds a second guitarist, Lars Ove Fossheim. The album was recorded at Studio Paradiso in Oslo in November 2022 and was mixed and produced by Lasse Marhaug. Greg Pope took the beautiful cover artwork.
Winther continues to write cryptic, dreamy texts and deliver them in an unassuming, plainspoken voice that times brings to mind the phrasing of Televsion’s legendary Tom Verlaine, but without urgency. The loose, unhurried song structures stress even further that reference to New York 1980s’ No Wave spirit. The title piece, with its hypnotic, intertwining guitar work, open tunings, and mid-tempo rock pulses, owes much to the sound of seminal Television and is the best piece of the album, a song that you want to keep on a ritualist repeat. And, the Sculptures in this piece are not sculptures per se, but ice floes of the Akerselva River as it passes through Oslo. Winther still relies on formative, free improvisation experience, is not shy from dissonant, distorted sounds, and still thinks that incident and intuition are the basis for any meaningful work of art.
Winther says that his texts for Sculptures From Under the City Ice were influenced by American writers-essayists-poets Annie Dillard and Rebecca Solnit and Norwegian surrealist poet Tor Ulven. These texts were written when he and Lauvdal were expecting a child, just when they were about to leave the city and move into the country. Winther’s texts capture that fragile, liminal state and imagine a kind of majestic place, a nature preserve, surrounded by water and strong winds, full of surprising and illuminating details and twists, just like his life was about to become as a new father.
Eyal Hareuveni
Christian Winther (vocals, electric guitars, acoustic guitars), Lars Ove Fossheim (electric guitar), Anja Lauvdal (synthesizers), Magnus Skavhaug Nergaard (electric bass), Hans Hulbækmo (drums, vibraphone)
