Mattias Gustafsson - Frånvarande (2019)

Frånvarande acts as both the prelude and epilogue to Mattias Gustafsson’s 2017 record Nattmusik, forming a temporal cradle around his B.A.A.D.M. debut. Side A was recorded back in 2012 and originally released under his Ornaments alias, manifesting as the withered, rain-eroded memory of a majestic orchestral lament, with bowed cymbals singing through layers of rust and the sound of children floating in through an open window. It was this 20-minute piece that inspired us to present Gustafsson with the conceptual framework for Nattmusik, through which he explored the cyclical symbiosis of humanity and nature. The four movements of side B were captured in winter 2018 as an elaboration on these themes, with pianos and loops tumbling into thickets of crumpled, perishing cassette. As a collection, these pieces frame Nattmusik as an absent point of origin; its reverberations are smeared across both the future and the past, yet the source sound is palpably missing. Just as the process of decay strands the object between the pre-degraded form and the eventual dissipation into the void, Frånvarande is a record that both clasps at moments passed and those yet to manifest, rendered nomadic and thirsting by the absence of its conceptual centre.