Johan Agebjörn & Mikael Ögren - Artefact (2021)

Intrepid sonic journeymen and celebrated electronic artists, Johan Agebjörn and Mikael Ögren return with their second collaborative release Artefact on the Spotted Peccary Music label.

As with their previous collaboration, We Never Came to the White Sea, which chronicled a road trip through the wooded expanse of the Russian Karelia, once part of Finland, Artefact, is an unofficial soundtrack inspired by Arthur C. Clarke’s classic novel Rendezvous with Rama, where the artists explore another wilderness: the unknowable vastness of space.

Just as Clarke’s novel conjured images for Johan and Mikael, Artefact manifests images for the listener—of the wide-skied stillness of a strange planet’s surface, or of standing alone on an unexplored moon and feeling silver sand sift through your fingers. Sounds from the past three decades unite to evoke this austere future. The warm pulse of vintage synthesizers blends with the steely atmospherics and electronic sounds of a modern sci-fi soundtrack. With styles ranging from ambient to trance, Artefact also features collaborations with fellow electronic musicians Between Interval and Le Prix, as well as ethereal soprano vocals from Martina Björk.

Artefact is both peaceful and propulsive, a journey through the tension and beauty of space exploration, the fear and curiosity of alien contact, the majesty of stars and the great swaths of emptiness between them