Over the years of listening to music by Sumie, Karl Vento and Anna Von Hausswolff the name Filip Leyman is a constant. Based in Gothenburg, Filip is a supremely talented producer and musician who is able to use his magic to imbue recordings with warmth and humanity. He is able to capture the magic sweet spot when recording artists, the musical equivalent of the golden hour in film. It’s not surprising then that his album Soft Light is so remarkable.
Leyman has been collecting up parts of his live modular sessions for years with no sense of them being for release. Most musicians will tell you that they keep scraps in the notes on paper, phone recordings, all sketches for things that rarely, if ever, see the light of day. Luckily for us Leyman has pulled out his digital needle and thread to assemble these recordings and enhance them into the most thoughtful and entrancing set of ambient tracks.
The tracks all have a similar palette of introspection, a journey through subtlety changing landscapes each one as beautiful as the next. There are subtle shifts in what he calls “rising rhythms and microtonal melodies. This celestial atmosphere”. The harmonic changes in the opening track ‘Beyond the Sea’ slide around languorously with gentle arpeggios dancing over the top like fireflies. ‘Shapes’ is a haunting mix of dazed organ sounds with a subtle tune and found sounds that swell into a gorgeous flute-like melody.
There is the slight shift from major to minor in ‘Dreamland’, the cloud-like grace of the title track ‘Soft Light’, followed by the slight menace of drones on ‘Død Kalm’. More arpeggios abound on ‘ S.R. 819’ (the title of episode 9 of season 6 of The X-Files) and the Philip Glass-like repetitions are occasionally shuddered by subbass. The final track, ‘End Game’ has the feel of electronic chamber music with strings sliding around solar winds and receiving deep space radio waves.
This is not just modular synth tweaking; there is nothing clinical or over-produced here. Filip Leyman has crafted sounds in the way an oil painter uses colour and texture on canvas. There are unexpected sounds woven into the album with enough grit to produce a pearl. These are tracks that might evoke space, the sea or idyllic countryside, but whatever pictures it conjures up you will be transported to places that allow your mind to drift in the most gratifying way. Ambient perfection.
Soft Light is released through Anna von Hausswolff’s Pomperipossa Records
Filip Leyman: Website | Bandcamp | Instagram
Review by Paul F Cook
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