Music album in stream/mp3-format.

Muutos is a part of an artistic research experiment and article in progress called Ulu speaking. The aim of the experiment is to investigate opportunities of using a specific language situation – perceived melodies and rhythms – as direct building blocks in musical creation processes and improvisations inside a free improv-oriented musical genre. Is there a possibility of extracting – transforming sentences and phrases from speech into graspable musical phrases and “licks” suitable for composing and improvising without direct mimicking and play-along? To use it as “artistic clay”? Muutos is the artistic outcome of these explorations.

Tech info

Tracklist

1. Hauta

2. Ruija

3. Jierma

4. Pahakorva

5. Huhta

6. Interlude: Nuorta

7. Nili

8. Länsi

9. Keituri

All songs on Muutos … are composed, arranged and improvised by Torbjörn Ömalm

All guitars, instruments and voices are performed by Torbjörn Ömalm

Additional handclaps by Johan Karlsson

Additional ice throwing by Nikolai Äystö Lindholm and Sandra Josefsson at Nuortajärvi in October 2016. Engineered, recorded and mixed by Johan Karlsson at Arctic Mire Studios in a snowy Riitajänkkä January 2017. Mastered by Ronald Vikström. Drawing by Torbjörn Ömalm.

Artwork design by Miriam Vikman.

Muutos: short letters to unknown recipients is a part of an artistic research project at LTU. The studio session; recording, mixing and mastering is financed by the PhD candidates private research funds at LTU. Additional costs and publication by Torbjörn Ömalm.

Muutos: short letters to unknown recipients is a 9 track concept album consisting songs that are created through a metamorphic writing process with the sound and phrasing of a language, meänkieli to be precise, as a starting point. The music is largely improvised and performed through guitars (and loop pedal) with a little coloring from everyday objects as percussion and voices/whistling. An “iced” interlude in the middle of the album works as a sluice between two harmonic spheres. 

About the music: Dark, mysterious, a pinch of bad vibes in a world of beauty, slightly ungraspable and unpleasant but yet a nice evoking feeling. Dreams of wood… a musk, disparate scents of late autumn. Putrefaction, rotting. A world of absolute contrast. A lot of inverted frustrated emotions. A light blackness but not totally without hope.