How does an album come to be? Is it just parts sewn together, or is there some connection between them? Are tracks evolving from one another in one direction, from the first sound to a full fledged album, just as the universe supposedly sprang from a first instant and then evolved into the reality we can witness today, maybe the big bang was a sound, a sound that signified the starting point of the symphony that we call life. Or can the tracks interact with each other and the sound that was the starting point, are there mutual relations of supportive creation in between them? I'm not an artist, or a music producer, so I wouldn't be the right person to answer these questions. What I do know is that I have the fullest respect for creative individuals but also for creativity and creation in general, since I don't think creativity or creation solely applies to individuals, that is individual human beings, but to countless other things in the universe as well. So of course I had great respect towards Lauge & Baba Gnohm when I had the chance to follow them on a journey, starting from nothing and resulting in their first full length album which they release themselves. I have had the chance to listen to the tracks as they were made and comment on them, if I had any influence over them I cannot say but it was a fun task nonetheless. This also created a sort of personal relation to the album, watching it grow and evolve into its final stages, resulting in this album being very dear to me before I even assumed the task of reviewing it, and I urge the reader to take this into account, but I will try to curb my enthusiasm while reviewing.
Langbortistan is an album with attitude, I think that after having released two radically different EP's, Daybreak and Monolith, Lauge & Baba Gnohm found an equilibrium in between those two approaches to psybient, and made it with an initial self confidence that is reflected on this album. Responses to the EP's were good, although many reactions were that the tracks were very similar in character, but somehow still different enough to be entertaining and not repetitive. This is also the case on Langbortistan, it's hard to differentiate the tracks when listening to the album, but it never gets boring or repetitive, how this is done I cannot say but my guess is subtle elements playing a bigger role than my direct consciousness can perceive.
The overall pace is slow, hard hitting, groovy and at the same time very psychedelic. There isn't a ton of complexity fused into the tracks, and this has never been a hallmark for Lague & Baba Gnohm, rather the hallmark is the strong emphasis on melodic content. Lauge & Baba Gnohm manages to fuse this cocky bass driven approach with melodic and ethereal elements, resulting in a very unique album. It's an album that brings to mind mysterious and peculiar conceptions, the true domain of psychedelic experience. As far as my experience has showed, artists tend to have this kind of air on earlier albums, fumbling around in a sort of unknown void, then after time the albums become more and more commonplace in character, I think this is a result of an artist sort of moving into a niche, not as to make an album bad or uninteresting, but that initial sense of mystery is diminished. Långbortistan is an album I would place in that early stage of development and brings about this very appealing mysterious characteristic.
The pace combined with an overall cohesive approach to the music makes it easy to depart on a more contemplative journey, so if you are into that kind of stuff this album will suit you like a glove. This is not space ambient or anything like that, this is highly beat driven melodic stuff, almost every track has it's own distinct melody and these are more often than not greatly executed, a prefect example of this is Hypnose(T7) where the melody gets accompanied with great use of flutes. That kind of simplistic melodies that get stuck in your head, in a good way. |
