Rotor Rec.
Matti Bye : Drömt (S,2008)****
Multiple keyboard player (=piano, pump organ, Hammond organ, Tack piano, Wurlitzer piano) and multi-instrumentalist (=glockenspiel, double bass, electric bass, trumpet, cornet) and composer Matti Bye who was already formerly active composing lots of film music projects (like for a box of silent film classics, as for director Jan Troell), and participating in some psych-folk bands (like Maailma with Lau Nau singer Laura Naukkarinen, or Vinter) now with the help of co-arranger and producer Johan Berthling (Tape, Häpna), also on double bass and electric bass, have a whole orchestra behind from the folktronica and (psych) folk (pop/rock) scene mostly, like Goran Kaifes on trumpet, cornet, Nicolai Dungr, Laura Naukkarinen (from psych-folk band Lau Nau & Maailma) and Elle-Kari Larsson (from acoustic folkpop band the Tiny) on voice, Jari Haapalainen on tambourine, castanets, Mikael Marin (from folkrock band Väsen) on viola, Leo Svensson (the Tiny) on cello and musical saw, Lars Warnstad on violin, Lars Skoglundon drums, timpani, marimba, vibraphone, Staffan Lundén-Welden on French horn, Thomas Bodin on English horn, oboe, Andreas Berthling on live electronics, for such an ambitious project he could only have dreamt off (like the title says). You can hear his approach to film music, near the end a Gymnopedie (Satie)-alike piano theme walks a path like in a forest, the orchestrations. Most often the music takes off in a rather minimal moody classical music style, but sets off like a dance, improvises and takes it to heights of tension so that this almost feels like electric music (especially around “uppbrott”). A singing saw sings like an air. A Swedish folk theme also suddenly appears (“Midsommermarnatt”), with an interesting sharp sound of keyboard arrangement backdrop against the violin leads. The music has moments of passionate tensions which hang in the air, and different moods of continuation, just like in a movie.
