David Åhlén is a Swedish singer-songwriter and producer who runs the label Jivvär, a painter, and the curator of the Stockholm-based venue Skaiv. He is the son of a preacher, and his music relates to his childhood Baptist services and adult devotional sensibility.
Impartation, Åhlén’s fifth album, is released after four years of silence and deals with spiritual transference. The album was composed in the wake of a personal burnout and a subsequent period of inner reflection. It offers an ambient sonic tapestry shaped by grief, stillness, and renewal, recorded at White Chapel Studios in Jävrebyn, with producer and recording engineer Manne von Ahn Öberg. Åhlén painted the cover artwork.
Åhlén’s music offers a quiet, contemplative, and meditative haven, born out of Åhlén’s own church services. The minimalistic, introspective pieces flirt with neoclassical, electracoustic, and avant-folk elements, and are structured like a cycle of reverent offerings – or humble hymns. These evocative pieces seek spiritual clarity and lament the current global era. They are enhanced by the celestial, wordless vocals of Rebecka Karlsson and of Åhlén himself.
Eyal Hareuveni
David Åhlén (keyboards, electronics, vocals), Rebecka Karlsson (vocals)
