by David Wilikofsky
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: there’s something distinctive and special going on in Gothenburg. The city’s signature sound exists somewhere at the nexus of Scandinavian folk tradition and weirdo DIY experimentation, with different artists and projects mixing and matching these building blocks to make them their own. Incipientium are billed by their label as “one of the most promising new Gothenburg acts”, and their debut LP puts their own twist on their city’s sound. It’s a set of moody tape music that’s perfect for the long winter nights ahead.
The album’s entire A-side is taken up by “Kall Savann”, a track originally released last year on the Förfall label. It’s a strange amalgam of sounds, beginning with undulating drones that slowly give way to twinkling melodies, industrial clatter and muddled voices. The composition unfolds like a narrative, disjoint sounds blooming out of and melting into one another; if you were to skip ahead a few minutes at any point you’d likely feel like you were listening to an entirely different song, but when heard in sequence everything flows together. These sonic twists and turns animate the piece, pulling the listener into Incipientium’s warped world.
The B-side is a set of shorter, newly recorded tracks, vignettes to the A-side’s novella. What ties them together is the shared sense of storytelling; while these tracks don’t have the same amount of time to develop a narrative arc, they still paint a clear picture in the listener’s mind. “Revy” features pummeling percussion that brings to mind waves crashing on the shore. Closer “Sol Tympanum” sounds funereal, starting as an a cappella folk song and transforming into an electric dirge. “Cuna”, just over a minute of garbled vocals and disjointed beats, is a Lynchian fever dream.
Much like some of my favorite releases from the city last year (courtesy of Astrid Øster Mortensen and Monokultur), this is a set of music that seems to emerge from the primordial ooze and lurk in the shadows. Barren landscapes stretch out as far as the eye can see. Haunted melodies are caked in fuzz and clangor. It’s another variation on the Gothenburg sound, and yet another one that feels absolutely essential.