Analfabetism
Konsten Att Andas Med En Grep Genom Ena Lungan
Fluttering Dragon Records
A dozen or so years into the project’s lifespan, it feels safe to now call Analfabetism the primary project of Fredrik Djurfeldt, the Swedish producer tied to at least ten projects running the EBM to death industrial gamut, active and otherwise. Rooted specifically in that latter genre and its storied history in Sweden, Analfabetism has come to feel like the most fully fleshed out and developed entity yet concocted by Djurfeldt, certainly thanks in part due to his relocation to the country’s desolate and rural north. New LPKonsten Att Andas Med En Grep Genom Ena Lungan, the tenth by our count, both circles back to the core sounds and themes which have been such a reliable wellspring for Djurfeldt, while also pushing a few of Analfebetism’s implicit boundaries.
While still holding to an unyielding aesthetic – cold, barren, and distorted – more than any Analfabetism release in recent memory, Konsten Att Andas changes its pitch up by offsetting pure blasts of death industrial styled noise with some of the smoothest and most abstract elements of dark ambient that Djurfeldt has ever drawn upon. While previous releases might have worked to connote wintry desolation with dusty and speckled field ambience, the deep and clean shifting pads of “Den andra feberdrömmen” feel wholly removed from both landscapes and the human perspective itself. Similarly, It seems odd to describe the metallic scrapes and resonances which begin to echo through the middle section of “Den ena feberdrömmen” as “delicate”, but here we are. The art and craft of how those sounds communicate menace alongside a sense of compositional richness (and even, god forbid, tonality) speaks to just how comfortable Djurfeldt now is within the project’s remit.
Of course, these variances don’t mark a total shift in Analfabetism – the abyssal drones and tremoring hums of closer “Den blostertid nu fan aldrig kommer” are more representative of the earthier read on dark ambient we’ve come to expect from the project. The same goes for the digitally crushed and backmasked vocal samples which are effectively the only lexical firmpoint of the record, apart from cryptic titles which perhaps draw upon both folklore and subsistence farming.
Death industrial’s not for everyone, and the sheer amount of depressive yet intense fare in which one has to immerse oneself in order to ferret out the particulars of specific releases itself makes for a challenge. But for aficionados of the bleak, Analfabetism’s entering into a masterful phase, with Djurfeldt flexing considerable creative muscle.
