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Elskavon: Skylight

March 14, 2018 By guillaume

“Elska” means love. “Von” means hope. Love and hope. Two things every single person longs for and needs, and yet two things much too lacking in our world.

A professional musician composing for film, TV and web, Minneapolis-based Chris Bartels also runs his own hybrid record label/production house Anthem Falls Music as an umbrella structure for a variety of experiments including indie pop band Bora York and electronic duo Hi-Fi Cali. Launched in 2012 with the Movements in Season album, Elskavon is a more personal project for the musician which puts forward an ethereal, ambient, instrumental and post-rock sound. Released on 26 January 2018 last, Skylight is Chris Bartels’ fourth LP under the Elskavon moniker.

Elskavon - Skylight (2018)
Elskavon – Skylight (2018)

As hinted by the Icelandic language moniker, post-rock band Sigur Rós has been a major influence in the genesis of a distinct sound and as a continuous homage, every Elskavon LP released to date has included one song name in Icelandic. Chris Bartels also quotes Justin Vernon/Bon Iver, ambient post-rock band Hammock or Keith Kenniff (another American multi-instrumentalist and composer releasing music under several different monikers) as having a big impact on his approach to composition.

Written to celebrate the birth of his second son, “Offers of Peace” also features footage from Iceland – perhaps as a nod to Bon Iver’s official video for “Holocene”. The song “Dusk Line Hills” came about when spotting a wild herd of elk for a fleeting moment at dusk when staying in South Dakota. This short, sudden and uncanny “event” provided the creative spark for the entire album.

“Every single song is inspired by a memorable moment in my life” notes the musician in the liner notes of Skylight.

I really believe memorable moments that we relive over and again are so incredibly valuable, and reminders to not miss the potential in the making now – these are gifts we can never fully get back, so really living these moments is important.

If “Anthos” is a quasi-modern classical vignette for solo piano and ambient electronics, “Buren Storms” or “Ennui” have a more ambient drone and post-rock feel. With its superimposed layers of acoustic or saturated electric guitar, voice, piano, keyboards, glitches and found sound samples, every song on Skylight is the sonic equivalent of a sometimes imperfect, out of focus or even banal amateur photograph.

Over time though, these visual repositories for the small milestones that shape the course of our lives take on a much greater significance, sometimes ending up as the only memory aid we have left to remember them. Listening to Skylight is tantamount to flicking through such a photo album.

http://anthemfallsmusic.com/elskavon

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Filed Under: Contemporary Tagged With: ambient, electro, Elskavon, sampling

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