The first 7″ vinyl of the American label Astral Spirits celebrities two Swedish heroes – sax titan Mats Gustafsson and electronics player, producer and the founder of the iDEAL Recordings Joachim Nordwall (and member of The Skull Defekts). This limited edition of 350 vinyl plus download option was recorded Nickelsdorf and Brännö in 2019-2020 and mixed by Nordwall.
Nordwall produced and released a few of Gustafsson’s releases in his label (the Trio Nash Kontrol with Dror Feiler and Lasse Marhaug and the duos of Gustafsson with Luca Tommaso Mai and Fred Lonberg-Holm) and played on the first albums of Gustafsson’s Fire! Orchestra. Gustafsson and Nordwall recorded so far one duo album, «A Map of Guilt» (Bocian, 2016), and the new vinyl, «Shadows of Tomorrow b/w The Brain Produces Electrical Waves» expands on their previous work.
Gustafsson employs his saxophone as a kind of alien tube for channeling and manipulating air with different modes of energy. In the first piece «Shadows of Tomorrow», he intensifies gently the claustrophobic yet minimalist and dark atmosphere of Nordwall’s synthesizers. But on the second piece, «The Brain Produces Electrical Waves» he deepens the menacing atmosphere even more with fierce and wild blows, pushing this piece comes closer to an abstract, nightmarish Musique concrète.
Less than 8 minutes long but bound to become a collector’s item.
Eyal Hareuveni
Mats Gustafsson (s), Joachim Nordwall (synth)
