HENRIK LINDSTRAND - Space Between

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.      

ERLAND COOPER and HENRIK LINDSTRAND live in the Elbe Philharmonic Hall, Hamburg (November 5th 2023)

When I stepped outside the Elphi, as the locals call the famous Philharmonic Hall of Hamburg by the river Elbe, it was pouring with rain. That was quite inconvenient, since I had left my outer piece of clothing in the car, which was now parked twelve-hundred meters away. But as I hurried through the wet city towards my (luckily free) parking spot, I realized it wasn't actually that bad:
Good that it's only a warm summer rain! Yes, I actually thought that - before remembering we're already with one foot under the Christmas tree!

I would like to believe that - apart from the concept of seasons being more and more nullified by climate change - it was the music I had just experienced which had transported me to other places, from which I just hadn't completely come back yet, when this thought ran through my mind.

Admittedly neither Henrik "The next song is about a place in Copenhagen" Lindstrand's nor Erland "the best way to go to Scotland is by boat" Cooper's favorite sources of inspiration are explicitly known for being less rainy than Hamburg. They do have spring and summer though.

HENRIK LINDSTRAND

The first show of the evening belonged to Swedish composer/pianist Henrik Lindstrand, who had caught my interest a couple of months ago, when One Little Independent Records released his latest album "Klangland". He played a Steinway & Sons concert grand and some smaller toys (synths, bells, melodica, effects and the occasional sampled beat) on top of it. And even more importantly he was accompanied by a four-piece string ensemble.

Together they wandered through landscapes of sweet melancholic intimacy and elevating grandeur, but while doing so also created a ton of sounds you wouldn't usually expect in this setting, because not Lindstrand himself mixed his Classical tradition up with contemporary experimentalism, but also the violins and cello were plugged, scratched and bowed in many unconventional ways, all in service of creating unique atmospheres.

The performance included songs of all his four albums, but no matter if the material was already familiar to me or not - it was all around breathtaking. And what a sound!

We were not in the Main Hall (like last year when I had been here the first time to see the Sun Ra Arkestra), but only in the Small Hall, which is quite an understatement, because for both artists it appearantly was the biggest, most unbelievable thing ever.
It's much simpler and straight-forward than the architechtonically spectacular heart of the building, but still objectively pretty huge and above all also designed with the acoustics as top priority. And even though my central spot in the first row might have helped too, I must say that the sound was close to utter perfection. Absolute chef's kiss!

ERLAND COOPER

As you may already have guessed I had bought my ticket mainly for Henrik Lindstrand. Back then there was only a very quick check of what Erland Cooper was doing before I decided that it would surely be worthwhile, but didn't dig into his work deeper, just to keep it a nice bonus surprise in a way for me.

Coming back into the hall the audience was greeted by a tape recorder sitting on top of the grand piano playing birds' twittering - or is it xing now?

But other than this important prop, which he would later even run around in the room with, a pretty huge part of the set-up and direction had a lot in common with the artist before. It also was a piano/strings ensemble combination with experimental extra spice. The trio of violin, viola and violincello was focused a little bit more on tradional harmony and virtuosity here, which could sound astonishingly big and orchestral at times, but brought in Ambient and soundtrack-ish elements - including singing through the instrument mics - as well.

Cooper opened several songs with spoken word samples and even had his most pop-affine moment, when he sang smooth lead vocals to a backing track, which was later accompanied by the live instruments.
When he didn't play piano, he moved around, conducting the strings or just enjoying the sound of the group, which was actually playing together for the very first time.

All in all it was another outstanding performance. My two only small points of criticism would be 1. that the birds and weather sounds were a little too much, a little too kitschy - you should put more trust into the music that it will set the scene by itself - and 2. the show just was over too soon. 

What a great late musical highlight of the year this night was! And please liebe Elbphilharmonie: next time don't scare me by having the QR-code of my ticket not being excepted at the automatic entry. (Got my entry approved stamp in the office without problems, but man, that had made me needlessly nervous nonetheless.) Thanks!

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"!