This extraordinary work, a fusion of experimental folk and classical, is a one of rare and exquisite beauty by the Stockholm-based acclaimed Norwegian composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist, creating sounds from the human voice alone into a powerful, delicate, poetic melancholy, mother-perspective ode to the peril of our planet in the age of the Anthropocene. Karijord has always worked with the voice, and this project had its basis six years ago after a project with Stockholm University, who do voice research with contact microphones for people with hearing and vocal disabilities. Sampling 25 voices of all types, she skilfully manipulated the pitch, delay, and other characteristics of the samples to unlock an entire new instrument and universe of sound. Then for this album, she engaged the American voice ensemble Roomful of Teeth to bring similar and developing effects, recording them in Grieg Hall in Bergen. The results were a thing of beauty in itself, but what of LP’s subject matter? It was inspired by an episode of the podcast On Being of an interview with the Buddhist poet, translator, and philosopher Joanna Macy.
“I heard a sequence where she was talking about ‘grief over a changing world,’ and that really became the record’s headline,” explains Karijord. “With her permission, I started trying to set music to poems by Rainer Maria Rilke that she had translated. I felt the poems expressed something I have been yearning to write about myself. He described a longing for the natural world, for a deep belonging—but he also describes the Anthropocene and disintegration from nature, way ahead of his time.” The album’s title itself comes from Rilke’s poem Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower, referencing the transformative power of art, that can change fear into something beautiful and valuable.
The results are nothing less than stunning, from the opener Lacrimosa, sampling a portion of the interview with Macy that sparked the album’s theme. “It seems clear that we who are alive now are [...] witnessing something for our planet that has not happened at any time before [...] There’s a need some of us feel, I know I do, to what looks like it must disappear, to say, ‘Thanks, you’re beautiful.’”
From here the album opens out in the sheer breadth and possibility of the voice in a variety of moods and sounds. The highlights perhaps are those in which Karijord’s voice takes a lead role, surrounded by other vocal sounds, especially on Sanctuary (addressed to her two young daughters on the future of Earth) and Serenade, a love song to nature, starting with a euphonious cooing of the vocal instrument, until her soprano voice comes in, accompanied by lush harmonies. But there’s breathtaking beauty and wondrous invention throughout, from the gentle unfolding patterns and structure of Fugue, which at times really sounds like birdcall or woodwind, City By The Sea, the dark, otherworldly subterranean rumblings and breeze of Megafauna Pt.1, 9th Duino Elegy’s gorgeous harmonies, the mournfully pin-drop quiet, almost whale-like calls of Earth, the title track, or the ghostly, tender Rainer-echoing Let The Darkness Be A Bell Tower, or the closer Vespera. An album like nothing else around, and not just one that’s devastatingly beautiful, but tangibly important to listen to and absorb. Breathtaking. Out on Bella Union.
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