Sven Grunberg - Hingus (2016) Vinyl

Hingus is the first solo album from Sven Grünberg, the Estonian synth-warlock (and chairman of the Estonian Institute of Buddhism) previously of the band Mess. Hingus (which, in Estonian, means "breath") is lovely little marvel, an exquisite gem of ambient synthesizer music. Perhaps despite what its appearance and pedigree might suggest, it's not particularly proggy, nor does it have the pulsing sequencers of classic Berlin School-- what it most reminds me of, in fact, is not Jean-Michel Jarre or Tangerine Dream, or even Vangelis, whose work (especially on China) does come awful darn close, but Alice Coltrane's devotional efforts on staggering works such as Divine Songs. It has that spiritual breadth (and eastern modality, here manifest in melodies and tones reminiscent at times of Chinese opera and Japanese classical music) coupled with a strong, overwhelming sense of the sublime-- both the beauty and yawning terror of a hugeness, the unfathomable size of the universe and the invisible forces of the void somehow conveyed in whooshing, swooning, soaring synth washes and cosmic gong crashes.