CD - Touch
This is the third solo album by Bj Nilsen, an artist and experimenter who now, with "The Invisible City", returns to Touch, a renowned label that has maintained a strong presense over the last three decades. This record focusses on one the most engaging and sensitive issues in contemporary art: the relationship between natural and artificial forms. Nilsen makes this issue vivid through exploring spaces that are reminiscent of cities, both for the implicit philosophical influences, in the Zoroastrian sense of going past, and, in a more musical sense, in the proximity to a certain ambient isolationism. Essential in the sensitive, nuanced network of sound, the contribution of Hildur Gu∂nadóttir stands out, a musician best known for her collaborations with Mum and Pan Sonic. Here, she plays the viola, an instrument of extraordinary resonances, which combines effectively with the subharmonics of some of the very first synthesizers, real engineering relics of the former GDR. Recorded, not coincidentially, in Berlin and unraveling an imaginary psychogeography of icy metropolitan frequencies, this album surprises us with an accuracy that translates into a superfine stylistic attitude.
Aurelio Cianciotta