BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa - Big Shadow Montana

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Customer reviews
Press release

5...according to our Ant on Fri 20 May, 2011.

Yet another fine LP from this Scandinavian trio who previously released on Editions Mego. These tracks created on analogue synthesizers possess a deeply nocturnal hazy charm like recalled memories from a distant future/past. Ethereal drones nestle amongst subtle fizzes and sustained subtle tones. It takes no time at all to become absolutely absorbed in these fictional memories. Certainly the LP rides the hauntological wave provoking and summoning blurry dream states with nods to classic early German synthesizer music. Distant ghostly howls and deep bubbling electronics create vivid multi-coloured shapes that both arouse and soothe. There is also a sort of science fiction soundtrack element present which can really never be a bad thing. All sounds are deployed and executed with the skill and imagination we've come to expect from these guys. The LP ticks both the blissed and sublime boxes effortlessly and will for sure become a late night soundtrack for devotees. Remarkably accessible stuff too considering what these chaps are capable of. A delightful listening experience from the moment the needle hits the vinyl until it reaches the run-out grooves. A fine space primitive/retro-future record. Comes with download to boot.

After producing their frozen trilogy of intoxicated dronemuzik for the Agency, these Scandinavian gentlemen have ventured into more absurdist territories through fictionalized soundtracks for imagined Mondo films and science fiction serials. It is in this context that BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa present the apparitional Big Shadow Montana, an album of slow-motion delirium manifested in occluded smears, nocturnal gasps, and arcane tones from a variety of analogue synthesizers. Amidst the near constant wash of bleary-eyed etherialism, Big Shadow Montana cycles through several sonic themes and leitmotifs, displayed in varying states of clarity. In these transitions between half-remembered phrases and bleary-eyed thrumming, the album emerges as if it were the aftermath from a protracted bout of metaphysical channel surfing. Flickered impressions flash in conjunction with Breton's manifesto of Surrealism in the form of the memories from happily drunk escapades in the heart of winter, the sidereal spells cast by the innerspace travelers Klaus Schulze and Coil, and the nagging questions of existential portent: "Was that bassline from Goblin, or was it German Oak? Maybe something from Faust IV?"
The trio of Nilsen, Sigmarsson, and Thorsson elegantly twist and bend these fleeting images into a spiraling symphony of bubbling electronics and spectral drones that mutate on both sides of the record into lugubrious yet carnivalesque waltzes. When this first appears, it is the echoing undercarriage of a simple melody, bobbing amidst rattling chains and cascading cymbal crashes only to dissolve into sequences of cold-war era tone beacons and empathic swaths of maudlin sound design. At the second occurrence, the melody washes ashore on the Iceland beach, where nude Viking men and women try in vain to get a tan when the sun is just barely going to rise above the horizon in the winter months. It is a pyrrhic jubilation of calliope harmonies set down by organs and synths turning a pale-blue hue in the wake of all that white skin shivering underneath the arctic sky.
A hauntological album? Quite certainly. And yes, the vinyl does come with a download code.

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