Album Notes

Following his dark and ghostly 2010 Miasmah release “Schattenspieler”, this year’s “Library Music 1” has little, if anything, in common with its predecessor. Taking his inspiration from the classic old music libraries used for TV and low budget movie productions in the 1960’s and 1970’s, as well as the curious early electronic experiments of Raymond Scott and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Marcus Fjellström has crafted a collection of 18 odd vignettes spanning a generous variety of styles.

While earlier Fjellström releases such as Gebrauchsmusik (Lampse 2006) and Schattenspieler (Miasmah 2010) displayed an underlying conceptual and/or stylistic coherence, Library Music 1 makes a point of going in a completely different direction. Just like the tracks of old music libraries, the 18 untitled tracks of Library Music 1 are disconnected fragments looking for a purpose; music rich in character but without a preconceived meaning and/or context.

More than anything, Library Music 1 comes across as a varied candy bag for listeners with a taste for the peculiar. As if Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrmann had teamed up with The Black Dog and Boards of Canada, all under the supervision of John Cage, this is an eclectic yet strangely coherent collection, ranging from experimental through sentimental to playful and downright surreal.