Library Tapes - Sketches (Make Mine Music, 2007)

1 Snowleaf (2:07)
2 First Day Of Spring (1:42)
3 View From A Train 1 (1:54)
4 The Park (2:37)
5 View From A Train 2 (2:14)
6 Fields (1:58)
7 Waves (1:49)
8 The Typewriter (3:12)
9 View From A Train 3 (2:46)
10 May (1:59)
11 First Day Of Winter (2:53)

Collaboration entre David Wengrenn au piano et le violoncelliste Danny Norbury, tout cela accompagné de traitement électronique et de field recordings, chaque pièce devenant un mouvement d'un même morceau...

Originally conceived as a tour EP, Library Tapes' Sketches finds David Wenngren hooking up with cellist Danny Norbury, whose releases have previously graced labels as diverse as Static Caravan and Ono. After the ambiguous, droning intro 'Snowleaf', the two musicians gel together brilliantly on 'The First Day Of Spring', which over the course of ninety seconds finds Norbury's bow strokes swelling in an ambient pattern, while Wenngren's elegiac piano crumbles elegantly into the backdrop. From here on, it shows quite some skill that these two are able to find so many different ways of configuring an otherwise controlled palette. But for some subtle electronic modulation and occasional field recordings woven into the backdrop, the content is restricted to that combination of piano and cello, but thanks to the clever production and presentation, there's always an implication that there's more going on here than meets the ear. 'View From A Train 2' is composed from what is essentially the alternation between two very similar chords being keyed softly and slowly over two minutes, yet within these small gestures you'll hear a tangibly emotive power. This effect is only amplified further when Norbuy takes the lead, as on 'Fields', whose incredibly restrained, understated melodies never have to shout about how beautiful and instantly cinematic they are. Taking in eleven different sketches over twenty-five minutes, this release just flies by, but it also feels like it's covered an awful lot of ground by the time you arrive at the closing track 'First Day Of Winter', and this is most certainly one of those occasions when the phrase 'more than the sum of its parts' is applicable: Wenngren and Norbury have made something quietly expansive and deftly constructed from what essentially amounts to just two instruments. Lovely.
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Library Tapes - Höstluft (Make Mine Music, 2007)

Library Tapes, the fitting pseudonym of Swedish feller David Wenngren, has over his last two albums crafted a distinctive sound that's won him a sizeable and dedicated audience. Although he's lost the able talents of previous member Per Jardsall, he still manages to craft a record which will no doubt please his followers. Once again we return to the sounds of aged creaking and clicking piano keys, recorded to tape or set against crackling, hissing field recordings to give the illusion of age, the illusion that you're hearing something that was discovered deep in a forgotten basement somewhere. It might sound rather clichéd now with solo piano recordings coming like machinegun fire, but Wenngren has a distinctive touch taking influence from Erik Satie, Goldmund and William Basinski ('Melancholia' to be exact...) and then re-casting the pieces to make them totally his own. In fact the crumbling background noise which is so apparent in his works becomes just as important to the tracks as the piano, and the more you get absorbed into this fizzing and hissing the more you see what Wenngren is attempting to achieve. What he has done with 'Hostluft' is create a small window into another world, a short story or a discarded film reel, and for the duration (a meagre 34 minutes) you are transported there absolutely. Lovely stuff.

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