“Resurrection is an album of peaceful music where SKJ is on a quest about a biblical subject over a very cinematographic music”
1 Heaven and Earth 7:27 2 Resurrection 8:36 3 Jonah and the Huge Fish 5:27 4 The Light 3:35 5 Dry Land 2:51 6 Dawn 2:15 7 Resurrection Pt.2 3:35 8 Revelation 21 3:59 (…a new heaven and a new earth) 9 Revelation 22 5:33 (…water of life) Sverre Knut Johansen Music
(DDL 61:58) (V.F.) (Ambiant orchestral spiritual music)
Sverre Knut Johansen's third album in 2017, RESURRECTION aims to be an album of reflection, an album with biblical vocation on a subject which has been extrapolated many a time in the course of the centuries. Divided between rhythms held in control by luxurious orchestrations and ambiences sewn of white silk, this last opus of the Norwegian composer is doubtless the most occult of that I heard from him. Very filmic, the music always breathes of this duality between the divine light and the darkness. A little as if its author was always ambiguous but also very eager to put in music his faiths and his romanticism.
Heaven and Earth thus begins this philosophic quest with a very cinematic approach. Layers of violins upon layers float in shoals of celestial harmonies where roam more austere effects which try to bring this highly meditative music in a fall towards the somber nothingness. But the music holds out and the seraphic vibes remain. With its bells which ring and its synth layers which appear as the sun stealing shadows to the night, the title-track drags its mysteries on a hill as the pain which crawls in our body. The music tells its meets with Bohemians who dance in the sounds of tribal percussions whereas we constantly have the impression to live back to front where the day was stolen its clarity. Jonah and the Huge Fish is also built on the same principle of balance between the rhythm and the ambient moments which are under the high surveillance of orchestrations always in mode; make me raise the hairs of my arms! The Light inhales all of its meaning with a contemplative ode in the colors of serenity. Dry Land is all the opposite with its dark breezes which are stigmatized by a fusion between violins controllers of vibes and layers of rather discreet voices. But throughout this very contemplative work, Sverre Knut Johansen multiplies the layers of orchestrations which espouse his film vision of its last project. Dawn is the last den where the rhythm lives a little in a structure which would suited pretty well in a Steve Roach's repertory. The last 3 titles are soundscapes pictured with beautiful peaks of emotionalism, like in Resurrection Pt.2, whereas Revelation 21 and Revelation 22 are more in a kind of meditative waltzes perfumed of dark shadows.
If you like a relaxing music with a Hebraic vision which breathes cheerfully in decorations of old Jerusalem, RESURRECTION is a work which will know how to seduce you. Me!? I heard better from Sverre Knut Johansen. But I have to admit that the chosen subject is a matter of heresy and that breathes comfortably the chosen purpose and the ideas of his author. For fans of spiritual meditative music.
Sylvain Lupari (October 16th, 2017) ***** SynthSequences.com
Available at Sverre Knut Johansen Bandcamp
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