Magnetism
Inside The Temple Of Carcinogenic Waste
Fluttering Dragon Records
Having released records under the rubrics of three new projects within the last year and a half, Fredrik Djurfeldt is beginning to close on the number tallied by this website’s other favourite Swedish misanthrope, Nordvargr. We kid, but only slightly, as each of these new endeavours, as well as the continuation of projects like Analfabetism and Severe Illusion, has brought Djurfeldt’s interests in noise, death industrial, and EBM into different focal states. New project Magnetism stands especially distinct from his recent work though, linking moody soundscapes to his core themes.
The foreboding pulse and light hand percussion of opener “Ancient Isobutylene Ritual” treads far more cautiously than the scraping swathes of noise Djurfeldt’s been carving in recent Analfabetism and Mjöldryga records. While there’s something in the timbre and texture of some of these synths which isn’t too far off from his Instans solo project or some mid-period Severe Illusion material, the compositions and effects of Magnetism are something quite different. Early :wumpscut: and Leaether Strip instrumentals perhaps come to mind, though there’s something unique about Magnetism’s minimalist toolkit, somehow both placid and tense at once.
This isn’t to say that Djurfeldt is letting us off easy or straying too far from his usual thematics with Magnetism. As the album and track titles indicate, a darkly ironic read on humanity’s self-destructive impulses is still driving things. When a sample of an eerie moan, like someone who’s had their tongue cut out trying to communicate, punctuates “Demented Poetry” it’s a far more unnerving moment than it might have been in the context of an ostensibly harsher record. Every now and then a mechanical wheeze cycles in the background, connoting an industrial society slowly eroding and being subsumed by the dwellers of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but a processional solemnity holds court over the noisier elements.
As synths with reptilian frequencies and long decays weave through crushed beats and choral pads on processional closer “Outside The Temple Of Carcinogenic Waste”, it falls into place that this is as close to soundtracking composition as Djurfeldt has come in his career. Magnetism is linked to yet clearly distinct from each of his other projects, and serves as an intriguing indication of how much territory he still might have to explore. Recommended.
