Artist.......: Jakob Olausson
Album........: Moonlight Farm
Label........: De Stijl
Genre........: Folk
Catnr........: n/a
source.......: CDDA
rip.date.....: May-22-2007
str.date.....: 000-00-0000
quality......: VBR/44.1Hz/Joint-Stereo
Url..........: n/a
track title time
01. What Will Tomorrow Bring 04:14
02. Welcome Traveler 02:27
03. Silhouette V 06:11
04. At The Citadel 03:58
05. Live To Tell 03:57
06. Queen Bee 03:44
07. The Wind Combs Her Hair 01:59
08. Napalm Sky 03:32
09. Listen Sister 02:23
10. Unforgivable Question 03:12
Runtime 35:37 min
Size 32,9 MB
Release Notes:
If Skip Spence were somehow, instead of finding his
white-frocked self stuck in the rat-infested hole
that was Bellvue, transplanted to the pine forests
north of Malmo, Sweden, in a sonic nest of gimbri,
bells, shakers and clothed in Tibetan silk, one
would come slightly closer to the reality of Jakob
Olausson's migratory whims. To be sure, that foggy
and only slightly inland empire of synapse-twisters
like Ben Chasny offers a step on the trodden trail,
but this isn't the same road we've traveled before.
Olausson's huge ears protect him from the cold and
keep the sun from turning his face to a series of
desert crags, as his compositions slowly fade down
the walls of four-track bedroom artistry into
atemporal suites that shrink huge expanses and are
a bellows to the microcosmic. Enter the Moonlight
Farm.
-Clifford Allen
One Sheet Scribe
On "Welcome Traveler", from Moonlight Farm :
This is a great song for cruising around in the
woods. Jakob is the new thing, one of the only
people making folk-inspired music right now that I
not only can get into, but am totally jealous of.
The first time I heard his record I was thinking,
"Well, no reason for me to make music anymore. This
kid hit it." I'm over it now, which is good, so I
can just kick back and listen and be amazed. Thick
and multi-tracked vocals layered on dissonant
reverb-laced melodies. Damn.
-Sweet Cheeks Chasny
San Francisco USA
he's silly! he thinks mongoloids hail from
mongolia!
-dick champ USA
Jakob Olausson is best known, if at all, for his
sub-radar activities with Sweden's Joshua Jugband 5
(check yr Slippytown back catalogue for more of
that brand of boo) but this, his first solo LP, is
a whole other bucket of flesh. Moonlight Farm is
one of the most beautifully nocturnal and
disconcertingly intimate broadcasts to make it out
of the heart of the wood since Joshua's Gold
Cosmos. The overall atmosphere has the same kind of
early electric feel as MV's Maximum Arousal
recordings, while Olausson's evocatively
double-tracked vocals move from a weighted down
Skip Spence/Ben Chasny hybrid to a pro-denim and
leather Leonard Cohen (or does that make him Jim
Morrison?). His songs cross endless tranced dirges
with drones that are so lunar they illuminate the
entire horizon and huge distorto-smears of backing
vox that sound like tiny fists crushing the light
from stars. Some of the instrumentals here are so
evocatively conceived - beautifully reconciling
handmade DIY traditions and higher-minded bliss -
that they sound positively Japanese, with a track
like "The Wind Combs Her Hair" almost passing for
early ChΘ-SHIZU. But it's the songs you'll keep
coming back too, elegiac teleports to the fringes
of a whole other evocatively conceived universe,
where every breath births reverberant shadows and
the map of yr desires reads like a mirror of the
constellations. From one loner to another, this is
everything that the phrase 'private press' conjures
up and more. A modern classic. Comes with
full-colour stuck on cover in the patented De Stijl
manner. Limited to 800 copies and already sold out
at source. Highest recommendation.
When trying to get your head around Jakob
Olausson's music, singers and songwriters from
different eras keep turning up. His lyrics - and
voice at times - tread the depths with Leonard
Cohen; his tunings occasionally go wayward like
Jandek's, yet unlike the Texas recluse's, they
never get lost; his penchant for aural weirdness
and creating a signature ambience places him firmly
in league with tone-and-word benders like Matt
Valentine and Ben Chasny. His backstory (sugar-beet
farmer from Sweden) fits in with the crop of
cottage-legends that, hand-in-hand with the
explosion of home recording, has grown up in recent
years; Skip Spence gets name-checked in the press
release. On this CD reissue of the De Stijl LP,
Olausson evokes all of these, but does not mimic
them. Between these standard bearers and himself,
he puts some healthy distance.
For one, there's more light than dark in these
recordings. Olausson emits none of Spence's or
Jandek's hermetic insanity, nor does his melancholy
tip into the suicidal key Cohen would sometimes
indulge. For every moment of inward gazing, there's
an urge outwards. On "Queen Bee," he pairs a
critical character portrait with a plodding,
nostalgic progression. On the instrumental "At the
Citadel," layers accrue without rush, first a
droning violin, then a chorus of straining voices,
then hazy electric guitar lead. It feels
inevitable, completely natural, grounded. Such a
balance between inward and outward, the vague and
the crystalline seems a prime concern. He admits as
much on "Silhouette V," imploring the listener,
"For God's sake, don't hide your head in the sand /
For God's sake, don't run away to neverland."
Olausson is good at following his own advice. He
never lets his vague multi-phony overtake the
straight line of song, keeping the listener in the
loop at all times. The layered vocals and
mountain-lion howl of electric guitar on "Live to
Tell" get balanced by a steady acoustic strum. What
seems to be running water trickles underneath the
entirety of "Silhouette V," but Olausson deploys it
so subtly that it works as gentle percussion as
well as organic ambience.
A languid, unhurried tempo keeps every piece
shuffling along, and heaps of echo and space make
the harmonies drift - sometimes shapes appear,
sometimes they dissipate. On the first couple
listens, it might be easy to harp on the disc's
sameness, but the album's magic works slowly and
patiently. Every spin is bound to unearth something
new. On Moonlight Farm, Olausson has managed what
many have tried - he's created depth from
indeterminacy, and harmony from dissonance.