HENRIK LINDSTRAND - Klangland

I heard that Sunday will unfortunately soon be over. Luckily the next one is already coming in seven days. And if you would like to be musically prepared for this event, I recommend a fine dose of contemporary classical music by the Swedish composer and pianist Hendrik Lindstrand.

HENRIK LINDSTRAND - Klangland (CD) (2023)

Unlike on his last albums, on which all the sounds were created solely by the piano, Lindstrand works with a string ensemble on "Klangland" to broaden his scope of expression and let his soundscapes swell to higher pinnacles.  But all in all the eleven, all relatively short tracks of this album are still mostly carried by intimate, introspective themes.

His sound is modern in the sense that he obviously speaks the language of film scores and that it's pretty easy to imagine most of these compositions being integrated into a Post Rock or Icelandic Avant-garde Pop context. But then on the other hand in these imaginary combinations his themes would surely be exactly the part making them timeless.

There isn't much expertise which I can offer - and if there's any conceptual rocket science lurking on this album's ground, I cannot dive down to bring it onto the shore for you. So ultimately I'm probably much better at enjoying this music than at translating what exactly it is bringing this deep joy to me. Pretty bad for someone regularly writing music reviews, I know. I'm a fraud.

"Klangland" is one of these albums which you can put in the player of your car in any given weather, and no matter if you're crawling through the snow in the freezing cold or hiding your eyes from the merciless summer sun - it will always put a veil of melancholy and impermanence between you and anything in your vision. Which is pretty bad for your road safety, I know, I'm a public danger.

But seriously, Henrik Lindstrand knows how to compose music, which beautifully and heartbreakingly skips all make-up and pretense to get right to the ephemeral core of the art. "Klangland" has that particular purity, which evokes a feeling that everything you touch will one day be gone and that in the moment the melody reaches your ear the production of the sound is already an ocurrence of the past.

Is this a spectacularly new insight? Certainly not. But it's still profound. And so is this album.

Take twoscore minutes out of your next Sunday, close your eyes, lean back and exist in this "Soundland"!