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Tor Lundvall
Empty City

Strange Fortune

Posted: Wednesday, May 31, 2006
By: Matthew Johnson
Assistant Editor

Perhaps best known as a painter (he's done album covers for such artists as Sol Invictus), Tor Lundvall is also an accomplished composer. Following up the gentle ambient pop of last year's Last Light, his new instrumental album is his most evocative yet. Record label Strange Fortune describes this as "ghost ambient," but that doesn't quite get to the heart of the matter. Though Empty City is indeed haunting, it's far from supernatural. What makes this album so special is that instead of employing the the usual dark ambient imagery of cold abysses or decaying wastelands, Empty City conjures up a very ordinary city in its sleepiest moments. While "Night Work" comes closest to the formula of such Cold Meat Industry artists as Raison D'Etre with its hollow echoes and metallic clatters, the emptiness of tracks like "Grey Water" and "Running Late" is soothing and tranquil, not eerie or ominous. It's incredible how detailed a picture Lundvall can paint with such a minimal approach. "Early Hours" starts out with echoing footsteps but otherwise consists of little more than electronic effects and an undercurrent of vibraphone-like tones, but captures perfectly the sense of walking through a city in the dark hours before dawn. "Scrapyard" likewise portrays the detritus of urban life with cold, quiet rhythms and echoing drones, but sustained church bells in the distance connect the abandoned locale with the city's lifeblood instead of leaving it to languish. "Wires" uses nothing but softly buzzing tones to conjure the sound of electrical lines, audible only when the rest of the city has gone quiet, and "Clearing Sky" ends things with an image of dawn painted in windy synths and warm, effects-drenched guitar. Easily on par with the ambient work of Brian Eno and David Sylvian, Lundvall has created a true masterpiece, a perfect blend of the haunting and the tranquil.