Björn Magnusson: Nightclub Music & Ethereal Faith
Multi-disciplinary artist Björn Magnusson manoeuvres between sly rock ‘n’ roll, freeform improv & subtle experimentation on new album ‘Nightclub Music & Ethereal Faith’.
A work of eloquent songcraft & intuitive musicality w/ saxophone, guitar, piano & percussion played by drummer Danny Hole (Nikki Sudden / Kid Congo Powers), guitarist Sean Eden (Dean & Britta, Luna) & Swiss-Zimbabwean free jazz saxophonist Tapiwa Svosve
Urban vignettes forming a digressive portrait of life in the city, inspired by New York, Henry Flynt, Tony Conrad + featuring a transcendent cover of ‘Ghost Rider’ by Suicide
The uneasy, paradoxical sensation of knowing where you’re headed yet being completely lost. Abandoning the dimly lit streets for pitch black alleyways, only to hear the agitated squall of a saxophone converging with the demented noise of an electric guitar, as the piano and drums come tumbling in, drifting out of some door left ajar. Stopping momentarily, you make out a word here and there, too detached from one or the other to resemble a cohesive storyline, but just enough to hold your attention, and to inspire myriad curiosities...
An enigmatic overture of street scenes, chance encounters and freeform impressions seems a fitting introduction to Björn Magnusson’s new record ‘Nightclub Music & Ethereal Faith’. Arriving approximately five years after his debut album ‘Almost Transparent Blue’, these twelve tracks embody and accentuate the fervent, gentle introspection of Magnusson’s music. Symbolizing an adept, sly take on rock ‘n’ roll, embroidered with wild-eyed existentialism, ‘NM&EF’ offers disheveled songcraft strewn with eloquent lyricism, depicting urban vignettes of hard-won wisdom enriched by evocative detail.
Across the thoroughfares, detours, and recesses of this album – a magnetic procession of unkempt, improv-inflected saxophone, guitar, piano and percussion – Magnusson acts as unwitting subject and assured guide, his wistful, drawling baritone delineating inimitable imagery and transitory characters which coalesce like the pieces of a diffuse yet gradually assembled puzzle.
The everyday minutiae of Hope Lights (duty-free Japanese cigarettes), city crowds in Sunset Park, New York at Halloween, and early morning wanderings in Chinatown (NYC), as well as accounts of metropolitan disturbances, hospital admission, eavesdropped conversations, confessional monologues, and incidental observations, together forms a digressive portrait of life in the city, of time spent in the tight grip of an amorphous, ineluctable experience, caught between alluring vestiges of glamour and sentiments of heavy-hearted disconsolation. As Magnusson memorably relates on ‘Everybody’s Got Something’: ‘sometimes the world is an oyster, and sometimes it’s an ashtray’.
Although arresting and articulate, ‘NM & EF’ never gives the game away completely, there are no easy or explicit answers. Instead, the album has an impressionistic tenor, one which brings to mind the act of casting your eye over scattered photographs and impromptu snapshots or skipping through the pages of a novel and scanning the fragments for some trace of meaning. If this album is indeed a novelistic vision, then New York City is one of the central protagonists, an abiding presence permeating Magnusson’s perspective, inspiring both form and content. Many of the locales traced on ‘NM & EF’ lie within its sprawling dominion, however the influence of NYC can also be heard in the album’s musical fabric, imbued as it is with the droning minimalism of Henry Flynt and Tony Conrad, their exploratory tones peeking through bustling song forms.
Perhaps most significantly, at least in this respect, Magnusson gives himself the unenviable task of covering ‘Ghost Rider’, one of the most seminal songs of the 1970s, or indeed any era, by two of New York’s most iconic underground figures in Alan Vega & Martin Rev aka Suicide. All the same, Magnusson rises to the occasion, with an exquisite, transcendent rendition composed of after-hours piano, disarranged percussion, and dysfunctional improvisations. Suicide have never sounded quite like this before.
From specific settings to timeless echoes of counterculture, undoubtedly NYC has a starring role on ‘NM & EF’. Nevertheless, this is an album of manifold presences, a work of allusive, literate disclosure and intuitive musicality that relates to collective realities, reflecting the assorted hues of lived experience. ‘NM & EF’ is an unfiltered, streetwise conception that rewards curiosity.
‘Head further into the city, through deserted, neon-drenched streets, past shuttered shopfronts and obscure doorways. Follow the distant trails of music spilling out of an unfamiliar, mysterious district, keep going and find the source, you never know what you might find...’
While Björn Magnusson’s solo project remains his main vehicle for artistic expression, during the past few years he has also scored several films and exhibited installations and photographic works at numerous exhibitions. Magnusson also writes, performs and collaborates frequently under a plethora of various other guises and aliases, spanning a wide range of genres, all the while carrying the same aesthetic sensibility.
Consequently, ‘Nightclub Music & Ethereal Faith’ can be seen as the culmination of Magnusson’s output, the small tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
Have a listen and connect with Björn Magnusson:
https://www.instagram.com/eternal_jive/
Photo credit: Lisa Lurati
