Blomfelt & Narby - Peter, Barbara, Beth & Friends (2022)

Atomnation marks its 100th release with Peter, Barbara, Beth & Friends, the stunning debut album from Blomfelt & Narby. The immersive nine-track record arrives on May 27th and is a widescreen listen that fuses acoustic and electronic sounds with loose field recordings and tightly programmed drums.

Finnish-born Henrik Blomfelt grew up in Gaspar Narby's homeland of Switzerland, but the pair met on the dance floor of a pool club in Peckham while studying in London. Gaspar’s indie pop solo project was rewarded with a broad sweep of tastemaker tips from new music and electronica media alike, while Henrik had co-founded Resolution, an audio-visual collective and event series. The two eventually moved in together, but it's only a couple of years later, when Gaspar visited Henrik’s homeland of Finland, that they began making music together. They wrote half of the tracks that appear on the LP there, using an old piano, a cassette recorder found on location and their laptops. The second half was finished back in London.

The artwork's photos were taken by Henrik's brother Mikael on a trip to Mount Etna, Italy. "The surreal colours and vastness of the otherworldly landscape really resonated with us," they explain. "Our writing is mostly instinctive, but notions of colour, texture and space are definitely our focus. We often wonder whether our music is for the club or for the living room, perhaps Mount Etna is the true answer.[laugh]"

Wherever you listen to this emotive album, it cannot fail to resonate because of the way it draws you in close, yet builds expansive landscapes to surround this intimacy. There are beautiful contrasts throughout, such as the malfunctioning machine sounds and perfectly angelic female vocals on 'Peter Is OK Now,' or the frantic nature of the drums on 'Barbara Just Left' which are at beautiful odds with the soul-soothing chords.

Depending on where and when you listen to the likes of 'Trevor Left A Message' you will either ride the suspensory grooves to a higher state of enlightenment or get lost in the sombreness of the bass. As much as tracks like 'Kevin Has Been Thinking About His Taxes Too Much' carry enough weight and dynamism to power a dance floor, there is also an aching vulnerability to it that lends itself more to isolated listening on headphones. Elsewhere, the lo-fi chords and skeletal garage grooves of 'Tiffany Finds Faith On Fridays' might get your head down in a club, but the organic nature of the keys and warming vocal hums also lift your spirits.

Between the album's more propulsive moments, you are brought back down to earth with ambient tracks like the devastatingly insular 'Beth Is Crying' and hauntingly melancholic 'Jim Lost Control.' It is that duality - those off-set layers, opposing textures and the tension between private inner feelings and extroverted dancefloor joy that make this such a powerful album.

Peter, Barbara, Beth & Friends brings together the real and the abstract, the imagined and the lived, into a compelling record that moves you both physically and emotionally.