Ethereal (FR)

After letting seven years pass without almost any publication, and being reduced to just Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik, Pjusk has largely come back for a short year: numerous EPs in digital format last fall, and two long-formats for this winter 2022 Before an album on Somewherecold Records, it is on 12k that we find the Norwegian musician, for an ambient proposal which perhaps no longer uses real instruments, as could be the case on Solstøv with trumpet and guitar, but knows not to be limited to superimposing layers.

Indeed, a few small, almost dub-like pulsations can emerge in certain places (Febertanker, composed with Porya Hatami, or Ordene Som Blåste Bort marked by the vocal participation of Olga Wojciechowska), cracklings also make their appearance (Duver I Vinden or Trenger Å Være Stille) and a battery struck with brushes comes into dialogue with a poem by Nicolas Grenier (Uro). Unfolds, thus, a beautiful richness, far from what one could fear when learning that Pjusk had become a solo project.

Reuniting with his former friend Rune Sagevik on Jeg Fryser Litt, Jostein Dahl Gjelsvik also offers a piece traversed by a few more crystalline notes, coming to interact with the breaths and textures, in a beautiful setting to music of these forces of nature that the Norwegian wanted to document. with this album (whose title means “Salt and Wind”). More broadly, his compositions manage to give an impression of frost (minimalism and high-pitched sounds, shivering character of certain components) while generating a real feeling of leniency for his listener, as if it were a question of wrapping him up to face the northern climate.