By Beau O’Neill (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: October 3, 2012
On the sea-swept archipelago of Svalbard, overlooked by Mount Doka, against the frozen waters of the Billefjorden, lies the abandoned Russian mining town of Pyramiden: the setting, background, and thematic origin of Danish indie band Efterklang’s new concept album, Piramida.
This desolate town is important to understanding the album, as the content stays so close to the concept. This is a work with a fixation on the complexities of naming and representation.
Pyramiden was named after the nearby mountain that visually suggests a pyramid. The album is so called because it sonically imitates the town—deserted so abruptly by its population that the buildings remain intact—through field recordings and a cold, sometimes gloomy tone.
Furthermore, each song is structured like that pyramidal mount, only inverted. The compositions begin minimally with a single instrument and a simple phrase, and are layered over until they form large musical expanses, though never attempting too great a strain on the base.
Among their other various contributions, Casper Clausen’s vocals, Rasmus Stolberg’s synthesizers, and Mads Brauer’s bass lines compose this ground layer, and are accompanied by the horn, clarinet, saxophone and percussion playing of multiple guest musicians, including the light-as-snow backing vocals of the South Denmark Girls’ Choir.
But the music is not as distant and inaccessible as its inspiration. The first track, “Hollow Mountain,” is the single for good reason. Though it begins with a tinny percussion rhythm that may have been recorded in a Soviet oil tank, and features a mystifying, dark synth that harmonizes with Clausen’s eerie, echoing vocals. The intro imitates the water drops that now fall in the tunnels of the carved out hills, with a percussive quality that reflects John Cage, only more coherent.
Questioning the purpose of a settlement in such a demanding part of the world, and being humbled by the region’s remoteness, Clausen asks, “Do it, do it operator, So what, so what, so what? It’s impossible, when the night inverts us / And I wonder … what I am.”
Though the bulk of the recording was done in Berlin, he sings, and sounds, as if he were still on the island. On “Apples” he frames a similar thought under the guise of a love song: “Start to look a second, and then we’re off / The more you take to yourself, the more you take away.”
Running parallel with the theme of desertion found on “The Ghost” and “Sedna,” the name of an Inuit sea goddess and a song imitative of her domain, is the theme of the contrasting but connected states of abundance and exhaustion, which is explored in “Told to be Fine,” “The Living Layer,” and “Between the Walls,” but is expressed most forcefully in the prima facie paradoxically titled “Black Summer.”
Because of a funky baritone saxophone that jumps alongside a full set of horns, this track is reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s second piece from their Atom Heat Mother Suite, “Breast Milky,” and is easily the most pop-sounding and lively of the 10 tracks. It is as representative of the whole as “Hollow Mountain.”
The album finishes with the dreamy “Monument,” most likely referencing the bust of Lenin outside the town’s cultural centre, symbolic of all that has come and gone, which leads us out of town to the tune of birds chirping and a light breeze blowing. In their endeavour to capture, transform and communicate the fate and essence of Pyramiden, Efterklang has succeeded both artistically and technically, producing a work neither cold and barren, nor which should be left to the odd, adventurous tourist.
