Yair Elazar Glotman & Mats Erlandsson - Negative Chambers (2017)

This collaborative project between Mats Erlandsson and Yair Elazar Glotman draws on their respective musical backgrounds to create an imaginary, dislocated "folk" music for the current dark ages. The project brings together instruments out of their historical or national contexts and focuses on local sounds that have lost any connection to locality or folk and transforming them through current production techniques.

Negative Chambers feels completely timeless in its quiet minimalism and is made up of an array of instrumentation such as gimbri, violin, karkaba, miniature cymbals, cello, harmonium, steel string acoustic guitar, zithers, transistor radio, tibetan singing bowl, amplified plate & piano frame, partly led by a slow, almost spiritual contrabass. There is some incredibly detailed and wide sound design encompassing the pieces, from the pictural stillness of Orchid Sedation to the unnerving mass of dissonant strings on Ceramic Relic. Glotman & Erlandsson are masters in creating a sound filled with solitude, anxiety and intrigue.

Recorded both independently and in very close correspondence between Stockholm and Berlin, Negative Chambers is a dialog between the two composers and manages to be both a meditative reflection on the past while also presenting a surreal and detailed piece of contemporary music.