Spinform: Bryter Tystnaden

Taking the Knife’s commercial ‘haunted’ house and extrapolating it to the realm of experimental electronica, Uppsala, Sweden’s Spinform (a guy called Erik Moller, who also records as Unai) has created a disc of intellectual but occasionally alienating music on Bryter Tristnaden, his Hobby Industries debut (it was recorded in a deserted manor in the Swedish countryside). Throughout, echoes of what modern indie bands are tinkering with seem to be taken to the furthest reaches, discovering serene states of equilibrium but no real revelation. “Impreriebggaren” opens with a sound like a door squeaking and aquatic clicks, the kind of noises that are commercial radio’s ‘mystery sounds’, before building texture with ambient held notes, guitar and warm strings — the song’s like a more experimental Psapp. “Lurliv” seems to take Thom Yorke’s jittering, caffeinated beats further, with soft radio static and ethereal synth figures in the background. At the music’s most serene, as on “Frestelser Och Bekymmer”, Spinform resembles Japanese experimentalists like Takagi Masakatsu — a simple piano theme is overlaid with mosquito-static and forward-placed metallic pings. The aesthetic of the songs is minimal — compositions don’t follow a familiar arc of growing texture — but there are so many interesting, strange sounds woven into the texture of the music that the listener is never click-tracked into boredom.