Thrill Jockey – THRILL 577
Mats Gustafsson is often associated with the explosive possibilities of the saxophone, but Their Power Reached Across Space and Time begins by withholding that expected eruption. This is deliberately slow, low-dynamic music, built from breath, friction, electronics and carefully preserved empty space. Joachim Nordwall does not provide a conventional background for Gustafsson to attack. He constructs an unstable environment around the reeds, using analogue synthesis and processed sound to make the room itself feel active. Something always appears to be approaching, but the album rarely grants the release of a full collision.
That restraint makes every small sound unusually physical. Gustafsson’s saxophones, clarinet and flute can resemble distant calls, curling smoke, mechanical scraping or percussion produced by breath and keys. Nordwall answers with electrical vibration, low-frequency pressure and surfaces that seem to shift position around the horn. Acoustic and electronic sources gradually become difficult to separate. A rough saxophone tone may feel synthetic, while an oscillator begins to breathe like an organism. The record occupies the border where instruments stop behaving according to their official identities.
The pair describe the album as the result of decades of friendship and artistic respect, and its real subject may be the act of listening itself. Neither musician appears interested in conquering the available space. Gustafsson leaves openings for Nordwall’s electronics to alter the atmosphere; Nordwall allows the reeds to redirect the scale and density of his constructions. Their improvisation does not resemble a contest between two forceful personalities. It is a conversation in which each participant changes because the other has spoken. In an era filled with simultaneous voices trying to overpower one another, the patience here feels almost radical.
The elaborate titles deepen the album’s science-fiction atmosphere without explaining the music. The English phrases were drawn from Cordwainer Smith’s Space Lords, producing statements such as “There Are Some Worlds Where All Dreams Die,” “Their New Life Was Their Final Life” and “Oh, Said the Strange Mind, You Want Me to Think for You.” Swedish cartoonist Gunnar Lundkvist, creator of Klas Katt, supplied the brief Swedish phrases placed in parentheses. These are not translations. Cosmic declarations are paired with ordinary or uneasy responses such as “a happy moment,” “everyday life,” “panic,” “lost,” “boring,” “it never gets better” and finally “end.” The titles perform the same call and response as the musicians, placing vast imagined worlds beside small human conditions.
The contrast prevents the album’s darkness from becoming grandiose. Its science fiction does not depend on spaceships or cinematic spectacle. It comes from hearing familiar materials behave according to unfamiliar laws. Breath hangs in an artificial atmosphere; electronic hum acquires the weight of architecture; time stretches because there is no beat insisting that it advance normally. Even the longest piece, “There Are Some Worlds Where All Dreams Die,” feels less like a journey toward a destination than entry into a zone whose dimensions keep changing around the listener.
Their Power Reached Across Space and Time rewards the same kind of private listening that unfamiliar downloaded music can inspire. It does not supply a story so much as alter the conditions under which thought occurs. The slow pacing leaves room for associations to form, while its ambiguous textures keep the mind from settling on one secure interpretation. Gustafsson and Nordwall called it “organic sci-fi,” and that phrase captures its strange life perfectly. The album sounds futuristic without sounding clean, ancient without imitating ritual, and ominous without revealing what threat may be coming. It remains suspended beneath its black star, listening carefully to whatever answers from the other side.
That restraint makes every small sound unusually physical. Gustafsson’s saxophones, clarinet and flute can resemble distant calls, curling smoke, mechanical scraping or percussion produced by breath and keys. Nordwall answers with electrical vibration, low-frequency pressure and surfaces that seem to shift position around the horn. Acoustic and electronic sources gradually become difficult to separate. A rough saxophone tone may feel synthetic, while an oscillator begins to breathe like an organism. The record occupies the border where instruments stop behaving according to their official identities.
The pair describe the album as the result of decades of friendship and artistic respect, and its real subject may be the act of listening itself. Neither musician appears interested in conquering the available space. Gustafsson leaves openings for Nordwall’s electronics to alter the atmosphere; Nordwall allows the reeds to redirect the scale and density of his constructions. Their improvisation does not resemble a contest between two forceful personalities. It is a conversation in which each participant changes because the other has spoken. In an era filled with simultaneous voices trying to overpower one another, the patience here feels almost radical.
The elaborate titles deepen the album’s science-fiction atmosphere without explaining the music. The English phrases were drawn from Cordwainer Smith’s Space Lords, producing statements such as “There Are Some Worlds Where All Dreams Die,” “Their New Life Was Their Final Life” and “Oh, Said the Strange Mind, You Want Me to Think for You.” Swedish cartoonist Gunnar Lundkvist, creator of Klas Katt, supplied the brief Swedish phrases placed in parentheses. These are not translations. Cosmic declarations are paired with ordinary or uneasy responses such as “a happy moment,” “everyday life,” “panic,” “lost,” “boring,” “it never gets better” and finally “end.” The titles perform the same call and response as the musicians, placing vast imagined worlds beside small human conditions.
The contrast prevents the album’s darkness from becoming grandiose. Its science fiction does not depend on spaceships or cinematic spectacle. It comes from hearing familiar materials behave according to unfamiliar laws. Breath hangs in an artificial atmosphere; electronic hum acquires the weight of architecture; time stretches because there is no beat insisting that it advance normally. Even the longest piece, “There Are Some Worlds Where All Dreams Die,” feels less like a journey toward a destination than entry into a zone whose dimensions keep changing around the listener.
Their Power Reached Across Space and Time rewards the same kind of private listening that unfamiliar downloaded music can inspire. It does not supply a story so much as alter the conditions under which thought occurs. The slow pacing leaves room for associations to form, while its ambiguous textures keep the mind from settling on one secure interpretation. Gustafsson and Nordwall called it “organic sci-fi,” and that phrase captures its strange life perfectly. The album sounds futuristic without sounding clean, ancient without imitating ritual, and ominous without revealing what threat may be coming. It remains suspended beneath its black star, listening carefully to whatever answers from the other side.
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