Loney Dear - Hall Music

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3...according to our Dave on Wed 05 Oct, 2011.

The brains and heart behind Loney Dear is a Scandinavian chap called Emil Svanangen who has been making lush compositions since you and I were knee high to a grasshopper. 'Hall Music' is a short album, with a wide vision. The instruments are orchestral, synthesized and somehow organic. The pacing is fast and slow simultaneously which, by all accounts is a sign of good songwriting and pop nous...or summat... The sonic composition is also quite intriguing, and it's drones are warm and not as caustic as some other Scandinavian “Noise Mongers”. This is a different kettle of fish to the more ambient sketches from his last album, it has delicate strong structures and almost chamber style compositions, mixed with a slight euro-pop feel that doesn't always sit well, but i guess, if you have a lot of ideas you are gonna get the occasional track that doesn't quite “sit”. But more times than not the songs are strong and very evocative. A emotional, stirring call of an album.

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• After his last time touring the United States in support of 2009’s ‘Dear John’, Emil Svanängen AKA Loney Dear returned home to Sweden and began to play shows with chamber orchestras throughout the country. As such, he was forced to revisit his earlier material -- re-writing and re-arranging these older songs for performance on a grander scale. This experience had an indelible influence on the writing and recording of the appropriately titled ‘Hall Music’, an expansive record that finds Svanängen closer to creating the type of orchestral music he has always sought to bring to life on stage (whether he’s actually playing with an orchestra or not).

• Above all, ‘Hall Music’ is a study in merging contrasts, an album of impossible pairings. The pacing is simultaneously fast and slow, with gently weaving harmonic structures propelled forward by quickly moving notes. The instrumentation is orchestral and synthesized; organic and invented. A church bell paired effortlessly with horns and an analogue keyboard.

• Though at first listen it occupies your ears for just over a half- hour, it is an all-consuming sonic affair. This is intimate music that effortlessly fills vast, empty spaces -- in your head, in your room, in your life -- with a grip so delicate yet unyielding that you can’t (and don’t want to) escape it.

• Drawing from both of the emotional states it joins together - joy and darkness – ‘Hall Music’ creates its own unique expanse -- one you’ll surely want to re-visit again and again.

• Past tours have been with Andrew Bird, of Montreal, José Gonzales, Low, Peter Bjorn & John, and Asobi Seksu.

• LP includes full album download plus a bonus song. • LP is limited to 100 copies in the UK. 180 gram vinyl.

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