Wednesday, January 22, 2020

øjeRum - 7 Sjæle (Midira Records, 2019)



If there’s one thing in common across all the øjeRum releases out in the wild, it’s that they’re all intensely beautiful works of art.  Both aurally and visually.  Danish musician Paw Grabowski is a master collagist, and his artwork adorns every musical artifact that he unleashes.  They are magical, amazing to look at.  And amazing to listen to.

øjeRum here presents seven souls, or songs, each a series of cascading swells that unfold slowly and crash delicately into each other.  The music is hypnotic, dreamlike, and misty.  Each of the first six relatively brief tracks reveals itself and then vanishes all too quickly.  Every piece is a unique take on the impalpable nature of sound rendered palpable when received, transmitted and decoded by our own sensory systems.  Like a gas, this music seems to expand to fill whatever space it enters: the atmosphere, a room, your ear canal.  Harnessed by our minds, images take shape: waves, a sunset, the movement of bare branches in the wind.

The final piece takes its time to beam into existence.  Over twenty minutes, øjeRum harnesses the preceding souls into a whirlwind of lush and intertwined drones.  It is a symphony of synthetic tones, a splatter of starlight with a pattern that evolves as the music unfurls.  It is sound as beauty, the feeling of being awash in bliss.

These beatific tones are available as 7 Sjæle, on LP via the Midira Records website or on cassette through øjeRum’s own Bandcamp marketplace.  Whichever way you choose to digest this intoxicating elixir, take your time, let it wash over you, and enjoy.