MYSTERY SEA 42| Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words | [A Line : Align]
ARTWORK
front 
back
INTRODUCTORY
WORDS
-"For
what it's worth: I know I've built these walls myself. A Line: Align
ends where it started. It's fall and the leaves of Keiller's Park are
turning rust red again. There's a low frequency hum that's probably
coming from the neighbours washing machine. Or perhaps it's all in my
head. The greatest war is in my head."
- Thomas
Ekelund , October 2007
PRESS RELEASE
Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words
is the emanation of Thomas Ekelund's dim imaginary,
a sensitive music box giving tangible outline to the ghost songs hummed
by his immediate environment... Dead Letters Spell Out Dead
Words reproduces the in-between & shadowy sounds, moulding
in each work, a journey of deep intimate emotional resonance, nurtured
with a sharp conscience of a multitude of past & present aural forms...
Thomas Ekelund has a lengthy Curriculum Vitae with
music released under various guises since 1999 (Dead Violets with Jeff
Surak - Winquist/Virtanen with R. Abrahamsson...)... Dead Letters
Spell Out Dead Words counts numerous releases either on Thomas
Ekelund's own imprint WHEN THE SKIES ARE GREY, or on CONV,
ZEROMOON, KALLIGRAMMOFON, and his main home IDEAL RECORDINGS... He's
also a designer and used to be the curator of the specialized FUKK GOD
LET'S CREATE netlabel...
From walks in Gothenburg (SWEDEN), his place of residence, he has collected
a string of everyday fertile sounds, and mounted them for Mystery Sea
into a flow of magnified details inducing an intense transformative
experience...
-
Within lost recesses, in the folds of silence
hidden under dust & half-remembered memories
A faint heartbeat slowly pulses in your veins...
like an echo of broken days,
the amplified presence of invisible micro-energies
a view through a clouded glass...
You're on the trail of scintillations,
through the subliminal tales of rustles, clickings, & object world...
Erase yourself, fade a little bit, tune
in,
And side murmurs will show unexpected tones...
01. At Keiller's
Park (Summer 2006) 
02. Allt Jag Rör Vid Faller Sönder
03. At Keiller's Park (Fall 2007)
LENGTH
49'09
REVIEWS
VITAL WEEKLY 603|Frans
De Waard
Thomas Ekelund's project
Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words has been around for some
time, and has had numerous releases on MP3, CDR and CD, mostly knitting
ambient and glitch music together. If I understand this right, this
new release deals with on land sounds. Perhaps a first for Mystery Sea?
So far much of their music had a sub-aquatic theme, with sounds that
if not recorded under water surely sounded like that. For the three
lengthy pieces on this released by Ekelund he uses
the sounds of the park, of walking about, the sand, stones and glass
under his feet. All of that goes into the holy computer to arrive strongly
altered, smeared deep and low with rumbling sounds to the listener.
Each track starts out relatively calm, but unfolds over time in mighty
dark beasts - loud, perhaps even violent, dark rumble. Maybe that is
a bit of a pity since it makes all three tracks a bit single minded,
since they all sound alike, certainly the first two pieces. However
the first and third piece are quite, over which I prefer the third.
Here the dark rumble and field recording keep in perfect balance. Maybe
the second piece is a bit redundant, and without it, things would have
been a bit stronger.
vital weekly
EARLABS|Christopher
McFall
Rated
: 9,5/10
I've been a fan of Thomas Ekelund's
moniker Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words for some
time now and his latest release A Line : Align on Mystery
Sea has generated a great deal of intererest for me. One of the more
interesting things about Ekelund's approach to reductionist
music composition is that there seems to be an inherent coupling of
the cold and abstract nature of minimal machine-like sound structures
to that of a particular darkened emotional content. Honestly, this is
an interesting combination that I don't often come by. In fact, the
track 'In Perfect and Imperfect Circles' from his 'Old Ghosts, New Ghosts,
All Ghosts' release on Ideal Recordings is a perfect example of this,
whereby it would seem the rich, almost symphonic, loops tend to portray
themselves as the musical theme for a tragic play. By this regard, Ekelund's
music reflects his ability to convey powerful musical themes, while
at the same time maintaining the attention of ears more channeled to
the sound based content, the likes of which is quite stunning. 'A
Line: Align' is a bit of a different walk in the park than
Ekelund's previous works and, by this respect, the
release fits in extraordinarly well with Mystery Sea's 'Night-Ocean
Drones' series. This particular grouping of works is a bit more minimal
that what I've heard in the past. Interesting enough, the eerie ambience
that Ekelund creates in these tracks comes with a bit
of a psychological twist. Perhaps, this is best prefaced by Ekelund's
own words, which we're provided as introductory words on the disc information
page at Mystery Sea: "For what it's worth: I know I've built these
walls myself. A Line: Align ends where it started.
It's fall and the leaves of Keiller's Park are turning rust red again.
There's a low frequency hum that's probably coming from the neighbours
washing machine. Or perhaps it's all in my head. The greatest war is
in my head." In review of Ekelund's description,
I found that my curiosity was immediately conjured as to what sounds
these compositions would reveal. The first track, 'At Keiller's Park
(Summer 2006)' is around 22 minutes long. The initial sounds of the
first track remind me of wind and twilight. Later, as the track progresses,
it gradually builds into more subdued static structures and looped material
forming the backbone of the composition. High-pitched sinewaves also
begin to emerge. Midway through the track, the pace begins to pick up
with the gradual introduction of prominent machine-like looped structures
and beautifully constructed drones, which are more along the lines of
what I've heard from Ekelund in the past. The second
and third tracks progress in a similar fashion as the first with distinct
build up's of sound followed by gradual tapering. The sound content
for these tracks is wonderfully dynamic, ranging from what may be described
as robust drones all the way to near silent interludes. All things said,
I've found that this is yet another amazing release for Thomas
Ekelund and I would think it would be a must have for any fan
of experimental music composition.
Earlabs
AQUARIUS
new arrivals #286
This is the first time we've reviewed anything
by Swedish dronescaper Thomas Ekelund, aka
Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, which is weird as folks
around here are big fans. It's not for lack of releases, he's been pretty
prolific, it just one of those things, so many releases, artists, records,
so little time.
Well, we aim to change that all right now, with this, the latest from
Ekelund, a limited cd-r released on night-ocean-drone
label Mystery Sea, and Ekelund's sounds here sound
right at home. Three looooong tracks, the first, ultra minimal, it takes
minutes to get going, but once it does, it's a fantastic expanse of
ultra minimalism, so minimal in fact that much of it borders on Francisco
Lopez territory. But turn it up, and listen close, and Ekelund's
soundworld will reveal itself to you. A washed out murmur, peppered
part way through with footsteps, the sound of metal on metal, some sort
of random field recording, of men working, the clang and clatter overshadowing
the whispery sounds beneath, but by the end of the first track, those
whispery sounds have built into growling swells, thick smears of muted
melody, crumbling and almost industrial sounding when paired with the
grind and creak of the workmen.
The second track starts off in a similar fashion, strange super close
mic'd sounds, thumps and scrapes, crinkles and cracks, over a super
busy microscopic dronescape, all hisses and whirs and little bits of
almost invisible melody, but it doesn't take long for that track to
also swell into something dense and thick, high end tones rest atop
a pulsing sea swell like drone, the low end fading out leaving a strangely
dreamy high end shimmer, eventually fading out and leaving just those
strange clunks and scrapes and that whirling swirling whisper beneath.
The closing track is a continuation of track two, in fact, they all
sort of fit together into one sprawling soundscape, but the closer remains
murky and minimal, a subtle scraping floating on a thick, but soft and
smeared low end rumble, it's only in the last minute or two that other
sounds join in, strange twinkles and glimmers, like laying on the ocean
floor and watching bits of sunlight slowly make their way through the
swirling blue grey sea.
Amazing packaging too, full color tray card, numbered, the booklet a
half booklet, leaving half of the cd face exposed. Very striking.
And as always LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
aquarius
CYCLICDEFROST
|Max
Schaefer
A Line: Align builds densely
stratified layers of high frequency oscillations, grim textual vibrations
and electric turbulence, which blossom upon the tapestry of a macabre
grey slab with deadly force and a violence that becomes curiously seductive.
This work is more restrained than Ekelund’s previous
efforts, presenting these grim existential metaphors through elements
and a series of changes that are more indiscriminate, and which tend
to establish droning, trance-inducing environments, rather than simply
splattering the field with meandering patterns that play as a theatre
of turmoil and claustrophobia and horror. Owing to this the unsettling
elements stand as slivers in the skin of these works and make them all
the more successful for it - it’s not always easy to pierce the
veil of mystery and ascertain what this is about or where it is headed
and this combination of frustration and curiosity - itself encouraged
by the wealth of well-organized details - adds an important layer to
the proceedings.
The tracks thus succeed positively and negatively, both for what they
are and for what they are not: the thick, steady drone of “At
Keiller’s Park (Summer 2006)” acts as a vacuum that is eventually
cracked by minor eruptions of aural ectoplasm spiraling forth, giving
rise to a new segment of more jarring, chafing penumbras, while in yet
other places Ekelund drops out certain key elements
or even works in pockets of (near)silence, toying with expectations
with considerable tact and thus doing much by doing very little. “Allt
Jag Ror Vid Faller Sonder” perhaps best employs this strategy;
a continuous convulsion of negative energy, it’s a blank monolith
of cold black sounds that act like a phantom pregnancy: suggesting much,
but giving birth to nothing. In relation to Ekelund’s
strong back catalogue, A Line: Align holds up extremely
well.
cyclic
defrost
TOKAFI
|Tobias
Fischer
A charmingly naive and playful train
of thoughts: Astoundingly crafted aural sculptures carved from the solid
rock of time and imagination.
The world is obviously a wondrous place to Thomas Ekelund.
Let’s forget for a moment that this man has been an active part
of the Swedish experimental scene for years, that he has released under
various pseudonyms and noms de plume, become part of the roster of the
respected “Ideal” label and was only recently asked to stand
in for Stephen O’Malley at the “24 Hour Drone People”
spectacular. Instead, try to merely take “A Line: Align”
as a starting point into his oeuvre. Would you ever expect such a haunting
visitation after reading that the album is the result of strolls through
his hometown of Gottenburg?
Framed by two long trips through Keiller’s Park (one from Summer
of 2006 and the latter as recently as Fall 2007), this record freezes
physical time and follows Ekelund’s thoughts,
as they meander associatively in the river beds of his brain. The opening
Summer-track is a tripart 21-minute composition, which fluently moves
from very quiet, completely concrete microtonal field recordings and
silvery textures to a discreet and spookey drone piece, before culminating
in an opaque slab of fragile industrial rhythms which sound as though
Thomas had forgotten his taperecorder at some ominous
pressing plant.
Things were equally intense in Fall. Ekelund allows
things to drift on their own accord for minutes, contrasting an eery
dronewind with unidentifiable, fine sounds (like someone playing with
pebbles in the gravel), before humming his audience to sleep with a
lullaby performed on gigantic singing bowls. Only in the rumbling and
roaring dronescape of “Allt Jag Rör Vid Faller Sönder”,
which amasses density and grows to majestic proportions, that things
get more tangible. But even here, the last minutes are spent with observations
of the surroundings, of traffic in the distance, a mysterious semblance
in the air and soft noises of what could be someone turning a dial plate
on an old black telephone.
On the outside, these three tracks are astoundingly crafted aural sculptures
carved from the solid rock of time and imagination. Ekelund
weighs the components of his compositions equally, refusing to prefer
drones above field recordings or floating stasis above rhythm, and this
atmospheric egalitarianism makes his music simultaneously frightening,
unreal and weightlessly open. As daydreamy as they may sometimes appear,
their arrangements have been pressed into a precisely measured corset
which adheres to clear criteria of form and development.
On the inside, however, “A Line: Align”
is the product of a charmingly naive and playful train of thoughts:
What would happen, if that machine kept cranking out that noise in a
loop? How about banging on a glockenspiel to accompany the rising storm?
Could the wind howl in a minor key? What would those ants sound like
if magnified a thousand times? Nature and man-made environments are
the basis for these mindgames, which turn into surreal symphonies at
the hand of Ekelund’s clever collage technique.
“Erase yourself, fade a little bit, tune in - and side murmurs
will show unexpected tones”, he says, unveiling his secrets just
a little bit. “A Line: Align” is about
becoming one with your environment and about the world becoming music
in an act of mutual sonic rapprochement. It is an album which inspires
one to go out into the park to search for these moments oneself. It
is also conveys the message that creativity is not the exclusive domain
of artists: The world can be a wondrous place to anyone, if you listen
close enough.
tokafi
TOUCHING
EXTREMES |Massimo
Ricci
As it happens in projects dealing with dark
ambient and esoteric galaxies, a single human entity is the mover of
the big machine. In the case of DLSODW, his name is
Thomas Ekelund, hailing from Gothenburg, Sweden. Cold Meat
Industry, anybody? That could be the question for many after hearing
the obsessive, repetitive, really "industrial" chug'n'clatter
of the first track, sustained by drones whose power grows with any successive
frame. This is anticipated - or complemented - by a series of environmental
sounds that Ekelund recorded walking around the city;
the same occurs in the remaining tracks. This alternance between something
that feels natural (even if we hear cars, they do sound "natural"
nowadays, don't they?) and the threat of cancerous growth by those mesmerizing
lows is the winning feature of the album. In various instances, listeners
receive notice of under-skin heartbeats amidst the damp, cloudy masses
characterizing the general imagery, like a body whose life is slowly
yet steadily fading away, the flesh consumed by acrid gaseous matters.
Then again: noise of shoes on the terrain, electrostatics, maybe shortwave
radios. Is all this any different from hundreds of similar albums in
this genre? In part, yes. For starters, the overall architecture is
more developed than the norm, showing no trace of that dilettantism-drenched
presumptuousness that brings pseudo-artists to slap whatever lies behind
a pitch-transposed bass note on CD and declare "I'm an alternative
composer". This music is characterized instead by a positively
cinematic quality and a fresh attitude, transmitting good energy in
lieu of the customary head-scratching perplexity. And the electroacoustic
obscurity defining "At Keiller's Park (Fall 2007)" is downright
gorgeous. Translation: a must for the fanatics of these atmospheres
- and if I myself deem it an interesting release, knowing how little
love is left in my heart for the genre, you do the maths. Headphones
recommended.
touching
extremes
SIGNAL
TO NOISE # 50|Darren
Bergstein
A Line: Align, Dead
Letters Spell Out Dead Words’ MS outing, marks time with
a subtly teeming environment of barely discernible sounds so enigmatic
in their detail a potentiometer is practically required for the duration.
Minute, crisp noises like the chewing of woodchips by ants curdle across
thickening event horizons; bottomless abyssal trenches reveal the power
of ancient gods staring back across the gap—the devil’s
truly in the details herein.
signal
to noise
WONDERFUL WOODEN REASONS|Ian
Holloway
Swedish musician Thomas Ekelund
is the man behind the enigmatic nom-de-plume and here produces a set
of fragile and absorbing recordings. Indeed, so fragile that often
other unavoidable ambient noises (passing cars, local wildlife looking
for a shag, an unexpected sneezing fit) can completely overwhelm and
destroy the ambience that he is working to create. As the album
progresses Ekelund takes a more muscular approach allowing
his drones to build until they begin to dominate the aural landscape
rather than being subservient to it before once again retreating into
it's more introspective ambient form. I have to admit to a slight
frustration with very quiet and sparse music simply because my lifestyle
precludes the option of wearing headphones and so much of the time the
music I am listening to has to compete with the myriad distractions
of everyday life. For music as delicate as this it is a daunting
task and one that it often doesn't achieve. Having said that however
one should note that on the times where the distractions are few and
the music is able to breath and expand to fill the space then it succeeds
admirably.
wonderful wooden reasons
MUSIQUE
MACHINE | Roger Batty
Rated
: 3 stars out of 5
Dead Letters Spell out dead words make very stripped and quiet
ambient collage music, but here they seem to strip their sound down
even further than any of their other work I’ve heard in the
past. These are sonics for silent rooms or late at night which even
at high volume make little impact.
The sound here is built around a slow unfolding tapestry of shifting
static, clock ticks, distant buzzers and taps, settling tones and general
quiet field recording, with distant drone elements and slightly more
louder noise and field recording elements breaking ever so often
the very subtle sonic surface. Yet for all it’s subtlety it does
manage to suck you into (if you’re in the right frame of mind)
each track which maps out a surreal and micro landscape of it's
own. In all the album offers up three pieces which together total just under
50 minutes running time. Opening up the album we have At Keller's Park(summer
2006) which begins barely slipping into sonic view with a pattern
of static tone movement. Latter on scratching, bends and scuttles
and settling tones are added with distant drone textures that threaten
to suddenly bloom, but never do. Through towards it's end the track
does move into a relatively more noisy collection of motor buzz, clicks
and settles; feeling like micro industrial music. The other two tracks
follow a similar pattern in the subtle yet effective sound painting
tones with at times quite detailed and complex micro sonics being built
up.
This is ambient/ collage music that needs a lot of patience, a
quiet room and a fair bit of concentration on the listeners part. It’s
not for everyone, but if you enjoy quiet, yet cleverly built and designed
ambience you’ll enjoy this.
musique machine
IT'S
A TRAP | Avi Roig
Rated
: 7/10
Two steps forward, one step back? Fans of the elegant dronepop
majesty of "Fall, fall falling" will see this CDR release
as a disappointing regression, but those of us who are familiar and
appreciative of earlier Dead Letters works will not
be daunted. Consisting of three dark and dingy long-form pieces for
a grand total of forty-nine minutes, "A line: align"
is in fact a throwback to Thomas Ekelund's roots and
it is not without its rewards as there are definitely moments of great
beauty rising from within the filth. Opener "At Keiller's Park
(Summer 2006)" is the weakest of the bunch in that takes far too
long to get going, often abandoning themes just as soon as they begin
to take hold. Patience is eventually rewarded, though not nearly as
well as I'd like. The other two however, fare much better in comparison
by adhering to a far more concise narrative arc, not to mention a vastly
increased level of volume. As much as I appreciate the subtle crackle
of processed field recordings, it's the dull, aching throb of pure noise
that affects me most, both mentally and physically. When a melody emerges
from the squall and I can feel it tingling all the way down to my toes,
that's magic. Ultimately, "A line: align"
doesn't compete with any of the "proper" Dead Letters
full-lengths, but I don't think it intends to. As a way station to whatever
comes next, it'll do just fine.
it's a trap
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