- Over the course of his two albums for Miasmah, Norwegian composer Tommy Jansen, AKA Elegi, has proven himself to be as compelling a storyteller as he is gifted a musician. His talent for imagining historical instances of claustrophobia through a stylized and simple take on modern classical music has less to do with composition, though, and more to do with collaging techniques.
His latest, Varde, re-conceives the failed 1912 expedition to the South Pole by the British naval captain Robert Falcon Scott. The second installment in a projected trilogy, it's a work that delivers on its devastating premise with intimacy and ease. Robert Falcon Scott's body was found in a tent some eight months after he and his men had frozen to death. He was most likely the last of his crew to die, and Varde captures the isolation and fear that must have accompanied the British captain as he waited in the cold for death to claim him. Jansen's arresting sense of atmosphere and pacing takes the listener on that ill-fated, two-year journey, following the mood of Scott's journey from the eerie premonitions of its opening title track, right down to the doomy, climactic intervals that recreate his crew's slow death by album's end.
Throughout, Jansen cuts to the gloom of impending failure without pressing the listener anymore than he absolutely has to. The attention to detail is what brings this record to life. At Varde's center are the same forlorn strings and pensive piano dirges that form the foundation for most other modern classicists working between the goalposts of Erik Satie and Gavin Bryars. But what distinguishes Elegi are the interloping crackles of static, the old 78's siphoning through big-band orchestras, the creaking boards, the muffled voices and a recurring choke that sounds disarmingly like someone suffocating. The results are closer to classical collages of found sound more than music in any traditional sense. Jansen's mood rises up from the detritus of textures surrounding his spare instrumentation, which keeps the album from slipping into the over-melodious sentimentality that has a habit of sometimes overtaking the work of some of his peers.
By album's end, you get the sense that Jansen's work rises above the rest of the pack not necessarily through musical ingenuity, but more so by cultivating a deathly complex picture of existential doom. Varde is one of the eerier commitments of human catastrophe to music this side of Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic. One would assume that Jansen is aware of the significant likenesses between his work and Bryars' composition because he's exploiting many of the same cues. It's the records only nagging drawback, but it's ultimately a trivial criticism given Varde's refined intimacy. No matter which way you look at it, this is dire, often intimidating music, as jarring as it is beautiful.
Tracklist 01. Varde
02. Skrugard
03. Svanesang
04. Arvesølv
05. Drivis
06. Uranienborg
07. Fandens Bre
08. Skyggespill
09. Angekok
10. Råk
11. Søvnens Kvelertak
12. Den Store Hvite Stillhet