Joachim Nordwall - Music For Inner Peace And Outer Disturbance (2020)

Joachim Nordwall (The Skull Defekts, The iDEALIST, Saturn and the Sun, owner and curator of iDEAL Recordings) focuses the mind through two long, meditative drum machine ragas written under lockdown during one crisis, and released in the midst of another. Clocking in at half an hour each, the two pieces here bring to mind Ilpo Väisänen’s classic Liima versions as well as Andrea Parker’s by-now slept on Ballbreaker-era productions for Mo Wax.

Recorded "In this time of total confusion and fear” Nordwall is at his stripped down best here, utilising nothing more than a drum machine, analogue synths and some effects to slowly unfurl repetitive, slowly shifting heartbeat rhythms offset by wailing synths and cries of distortion like some lost Pan Sonic jam slowly defrosting after years in cold storage.

The two pieces are direct counterparts to one another, heavy subbass pulses provide the constant meditative loop, referencing the same dub resonances beloved of his iDEALIST alter ego but here imbued with a more solitary and contemplative focus.