Tape – Opera

November 2002 • Häpna

Is it just me and my personal cultural bias or is there an abnormal amount of amazing avant-garde-ish music coming out of Sweden these days (as if I have to tell you again)? Okay, Opera is a ten-year-old album at this point, but still. This time we're dealing with what I like to (jokingly) call "folkbient"—light, airy, textural acoustic pieces. But that sort of undercuts just how captivating and plain good this album is.

Opera's sound is quite simple: light and floaty acoustic guitars accompanied by a wide variety of backing instruments and gitchy atmospheric noises, all played in a sort of aloof improvisational way. Yet the album still sounds incredibly focused, as if everyone has a specific job to do, and a very concise vision of what the end product should sound like—and it's gorgeous. Sometimes the music is full of electronic glitches and little spurts of processed sound, sometimes it's droning and somber, sometimes it's very abstract, but nothing ever sounds out of place.

Such consistency is probably a result of the fact that Opera seems to be a very carefully composed album, and the attention to detail is a big part of what makes it so good. This goes especially for the wide array of instruments that make appearances on the album: the random saxophone that appears out of nowhere for a few seconds, the harmonica, the accordion, processed strings, I could go on. They always seem to know exactly what sounds should go in a piece and aren't afraid to go out of their way to find something that fits, and the way that these different sounds and textures and noises build around each other and grow sort of organically... it's those kinds of details that make each piece truly special.

What else to say? Opera is simply excellent. Sure, maybe it's not particularly unique in its style, but at least it does it better than any other group I've heard up 'til now. Beautiful, sad, haunting, and worth every minute.

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