OJERUM - WHEN BIRDS FLY, THE EYES OF HEAVEN CAN REST
aurora borealis 2017, cassette edition of 50, vinyl edition of 300
"As fans since 2014, we’re very excited to be releasing the debut vinyl from Danish multi-disciplinary artist øjeRum. ...two extended tracks of aetherial, haunting and otherworldly beauty. The cover art is a hand-cut collage, part of an ever growing body of incredible work from this talented Dane. The artwork expresses the audio perfectly. A floating, drifting haze of light, subtly shifting, organic. This is a world to lose yourself in." - AURORA BOREALIS
i have also been a fan since 2014's SANGE TIL DOENDE, since then one PAW GRABOWSKI has proliferated output as OJERUM and cemented himself as a top shelf PSI LAB favorite (this is the seventh OJERUM title recommended, surpassed only by LOST TRAIL with eight), a rare talent fusing sonic and visual artistic realms - he has been pairing good music with good artwork to such extent i can't think of a good comparison on an operational level as most of his albums are incredible dualities making him a rather singular artist in that regard
his music has mostly segregated into two hemispheres - songform (FRAVAERSMINDER, SNE, etc) and longform (HE REMEMBERS, STILHEDENS, etc), with some blending and stretching here and there (most notably NAAR VI VAAGNER, and SANGE of course), and to be sure consistently great, but nothing so boldly achieving escape velocity to blast free of SANGE and settle into its own orbit around my mind as the next big mile marker in OJERUM's discography
until now
if i could only have one of the aforementioned hemispheres of OJERUM's music it would have to be his longform styling and that's right where WHEN BIRDS FLY lands, or i should say soars, as this isn't just another turn of the wheel, rather it is quite the hemispheric paradigm shift, perhaps the ideal refinement of his musical ability and identity, as perhaps one might expect (demand?) of a vinyl long-playing debut from such an established weirdo cassette artist but nonetheless credit where credit is due when realization exceeds expectation
it could be forgiven if one did not readily recognize WHEN BIRDS FLY as OJERUM - the mood, both sonically and visually, is decidedly less gloomy, less wistful, less parapsychological for lack of a better word - instead OJERUM ascends toward the heavens out over a sea of bliss (again, both sonically and visually), establishing a more distinct connection to the classical ambient model than ever existed in previous works - measured ebb and flow of gentle tones finding contemporary relatively sunny side up comparison to DAVID ANDREE, KYLE LANDSTRA and WILLAMETTE - i might think of this as OJERUM's moonshot, "a world to lose yourself in" indeed, exquisitely presented on neatly full color labeled clear vinyl with glorious "hand-cut collage" cover art
AURORA BOREALIS also did a cassette edition "in keeping with the artist's previous catalogue" but also in keeping with OJERUM's catalog it didn't last long - but rest assured this is as about as good as it gets for me in terms of a "proper vinyl debut" so might as well enjoy it as such, sure to be one of my absolute favorite ambient albums of the year
