Reviewing the new Kayo Dot was a nice try in getting overdue stuff done, but there's one album which I already own significantly longer. And it somehow feels like the Yin to Toby Driver's nightmarish Yang.
HENRIK LINDSTRAND - Space Between (LP) (2025)
When you write about music there's often a sweet spot, when something still feels very fresh and you've listened to it just often enough, so that half of the review is already in your head and only needs to be put down. Yet when I miss this point, because there's just not enough time right then, I begin to lose the perfect (yeah, sure Stephan!) text and it becomes one of those impossible tasks you postpone in favor of other things over and over again.
Of course this pattern of behaviour is stupid, especially when the release in question is one I wouldn't write a thousand pages thick novels about anyway. Because even though Henrik Lindstrand's "Space Between" starts with a track called "The World Is Big", it actually isn't an intimidating, monolithically huge work.
The reason my mind is pairing it with "Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason" is that listening to Kayo Dot's album late in the night before going to sleep can possible cause a very unrelaxing sleep. "Space Between" however is a quietly contemplative experience that will just do the exact oppsite.
Of course that could have been the setup to reveal that Lindstrand has turned to coma-inducing, boring elevator music, but no, thankfully that's not the case. There is a stylistic shift in comparison to the chamber orchestral predecessor "Klangland" though. While the emotional, yet never kitschy compositions are still carried by himself on piano or organ with subtle string additions, there are other instruments involved, of which especially the drums on several tracks, but also the saxophone on "Gordo" take the music out of the Contemporary Classical world into at least glimpses of the realm of smooth-jazzy Post Rock.
The rare musical quality which the Swedish/Danish composer had already mastered in the past however, still remains one of his greatest strengths: The scale is impressively adaptive.
What I mean by that is also reflected in the sweet little comic strip inside the gatefold cover of the record, which can be read as a light metaphor on inspiration in one's daily life - as well as a deeply existential philosophic pondering.
So the meaning of this music is as big as you make it. The "Space Between" the small intimate, seemingly unimportant, and the huge defining questions and struggles - it's completely determined by the listener.
And the album won't judge your interpretation. It's absolutely fine with just being a tool for you to wind down at the end of a stressful day. But it will also keep up with you if you hear the echoes of either your greater joys or profound pain and anxieties in it.
A beautiful and thoughtful work with universal artistic applicableness.
And as if I had planned to wait so long with this review Henrik Lindstrand has just now released an extended version, which beside the reworked song "Neon Carousel", which had already been a digital bonus of the original release, also includes live renditions of "In Churches" and the title track.
Of course this pattern of behaviour is stupid, especially when the release in question is one I wouldn't write a thousand pages thick novels about anyway. Because even though Henrik Lindstrand's "Space Between" starts with a track called "The World Is Big", it actually isn't an intimidating, monolithically huge work.
The reason my mind is pairing it with "Every Rock, Every Half-Truth Under Reason" is that listening to Kayo Dot's album late in the night before going to sleep can possible cause a very unrelaxing sleep. "Space Between" however is a quietly contemplative experience that will just do the exact oppsite.
Of course that could have been the setup to reveal that Lindstrand has turned to coma-inducing, boring elevator music, but no, thankfully that's not the case. There is a stylistic shift in comparison to the chamber orchestral predecessor "Klangland" though. While the emotional, yet never kitschy compositions are still carried by himself on piano or organ with subtle string additions, there are other instruments involved, of which especially the drums on several tracks, but also the saxophone on "Gordo" take the music out of the Contemporary Classical world into at least glimpses of the realm of smooth-jazzy Post Rock.
The rare musical quality which the Swedish/Danish composer had already mastered in the past however, still remains one of his greatest strengths: The scale is impressively adaptive.
What I mean by that is also reflected in the sweet little comic strip inside the gatefold cover of the record, which can be read as a light metaphor on inspiration in one's daily life - as well as a deeply existential philosophic pondering.
So the meaning of this music is as big as you make it. The "Space Between" the small intimate, seemingly unimportant, and the huge defining questions and struggles - it's completely determined by the listener.
And the album won't judge your interpretation. It's absolutely fine with just being a tool for you to wind down at the end of a stressful day. But it will also keep up with you if you hear the echoes of either your greater joys or profound pain and anxieties in it.
A beautiful and thoughtful work with universal artistic applicableness.
And as if I had planned to wait so long with this review Henrik Lindstrand has just now released an extended version, which beside the reworked song "Neon Carousel", which had already been a digital bonus of the original release, also includes live renditions of "In Churches" and the title track.
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