I mean of course the first
thing you’re going to think of is David Lynch. His masterful mind-scrambler Mulholland Drive launched (probably) a
thousand cinematically inclined nightmarish dark ambient records. Lynch himself
dabbles in music, and it sounds as otherworldly as you would expect. If there’s
one thing you can pin on a David Lynch film is that it’s going to be saturated
in mood. Where does the story go,
where does it take us? Doesn’t matter. Serve the mood.
Norwegian artist Anders Brørby is a student of the mood. He’s a
slatherer of synths, a maestro of mise en
scène, taking cues not only from Lynch but also from Argento, Wenders, and
Pasolini. He crafts atmospheric homages to place, and you can’t help but be
enveloped by them. In musical circles he’s clearly influenced by (*promo copy
check*) Fennesz, Tim Hecker, and William Basinski, as his compositions crackle,
hiss, and pulse with tactile sonics. He succeeds by removing you as a listener
from your surroundings and creating an entire new, weird world in which to
place you. It just so happens that the new world is actually one that has
already existed, a repurposed moonlit night among the Hollywood Hills.
Mulholland Drive, 1984 is
steeped in magic and mystery, as is likely obvious from the descriptive text
you’ve already written. But it’s impossible for me to do it justice – the
amount of words I would have to type to remotely connect to the album’s dense
aura would fill a novel, and if I were writing novels, I wouldn’t be slaving
over music. But hey, I like slaving over music, so we’re all in the same boat –
it’s not a yacht or anything, but it’ll do. People like Anders Brørby make the
review game worthwhile. And back to his tape, unpacking each track is an
overwhelmingly enjoyable task, one that’s as satisfactory at minute one as it
is at minute fifty.
Is Mulholland Drive, 1984 an
homage, then, to Lynch’s film? Not directly, but certainly in spirit. It could easily
serve as an alternate soundtrack to the surreal creepings that the film is
famous for. And it doesn’t stay in one place, either, as horns are introduced
in “A Sudden Sense of Loss” and otherworldly waveforms flit through
“Deconstruction of Mirages.” Like Lynch, Brørby manages to surprise, injecting
the unexpected into his work as it progresses. It’s the mark of an artist in
complete control of his medium.
--Ryan Masteller
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