musicAddicted

As much as the murkiness is permeated into the black & white picture of a dying, desolate tree in a dark mist, the same amount of darkness, if not even greater, is a typical signature of a Swedish artist Dag Rosenqvist who performs as Jasper TX. Even without hearing any of his compositions over the last six years, names of his previous albums speak volumes: A Darkness, Black Sleep (his outstanding debut on influential imprint Miasmah), A Voice From Dead Radio. His new album follows this suite of dismal atmosphere; The Black Sun Transmissions, released again on Fang Bomb, builds not only on his typical drones, but as the name suggests, features fragments of murmuring broadcasts, chops of Morse codes and ear-tearing signals.

Here, Rosenqvist mixes the technical metaphors of synchronous and asynchronous types of communication into the musical mass. The purpose of his new works seems to be to underline the inability of straightforward and meaningful communication between humans. Morse codes serve just as symbolic mean for giving an essential, mostly S.O.S information which is a question of life or death. On the other hand are radio broadcasts which are just given; the listener can’t change the message of the channel he tuned up. He can stay and listen or turn it off, but no compromise is possible. There’s no other option or alternative; the decisions are extreme and definite. What is even more striking, there are no hints of voices or other human expressions; there are just compressed hisses and transformed whirrs.

Rosenqvist places this fatality into a glum environment of guitar and bass drones which present some kind of a misgiving. Weight of Days, the most approachable composition on The Black Sun Transmissions grows out of the opening piece Signals Through Woods & Dust. The first song ends in an unstable, uneasy calm which catalyzes nightmarish fear of what comes next. Weight of Days somewhat releases this tension but the underlying omen of deep murmur stays unchanged. Aaron Martin, musicAddicted’s favourite experimental cellist, takes care of the melodic part which is a repetitive set of melancholic harmonies appearing and dissolving in the mist over again.

His cello’s wails may evoke Gothic psalm, but it’s something more: the repetition expresses the impossibility to change the fate, to evolve into more perfect and solid being. As if Aaron and Dag wanted to portray a world where things don’t grow and change – they just exist and than die. Such tragic and disturbing idea is expresses through delicate and serene touches of the bow on the strings with dark echoes of guitar and low frequencies behind. As the cello vanishes into oblivion, oddly soothing glockenspiel appears along with few hushed tones of trombone, played by Henrik Munkeby Nørstebø. Weight of Days is a fascinating omen: deep and mournful.