Collectanea is a compilation of recent Swedish
electronica – you might momentarily wonder whether
you know any Swedes working in that field then think
big deal and forget about the subject. The difference
is that this compilation is a DVD containing videos
for each of its twenty tracks. As for me, I didn’t
recognise any of the names with the exception of Andreas
Tilliander, but don’t let that put you off as
Collectanea definitely has both visual and
sonic treats in store for anybody willing to listen
and/or watch it.
One of the things I thought I would have to be wary
of was the danger of being swayed by excellent visuals
masking the shortfalls of uninteresting music. In fact
it seems that the better tracks have managed to attract
the more interesting visual interpretations.
Standout tracks include Here Goes Nothing by
Dorothy’s Magic Bag – an upbeat breakbeat
outing like a simultaneously warm and icy winter wonderland.
A real joy to listen to, the video by Henrik Friberg
is a really great interpretation of the sounds: if you’ve
ever seen the 3d animation to Autechre’s
Gantz Graf and noted the exact audiovisual
synchronisation then imagine that technique applied
to a car journey travelling round a Swedish city through
falling snow. It definitely made me pine to be in that
particular car listening to the track.
Henrik Friberg provides visuals for two other tracks,
one of which is a great piece of moody glitch-house
by Malcolm D (where do they get their names from?) where
he creates an entirely apposite series of images of
industrial areas with fields of numbers applied to them
- again perfectly synced to the music. In a similar
musical field Vita provides a driving number laced with
glitches and superior atmospheres.
Andreas Tilliander contributes a piece of very fine
dubby soundscaping, all unpredictable angles and sonic
sideswipes – like an abstracted tai-chi master’s
moves (which come to think of it is an actual video
to another track on this compilation). Anders Ilar’s
fine ambient track Tank is accompanied by a
gorgeous piece of ambient videoscaping (building cumulo
nimbus clouds merging with attractive typography) courtesy
of Christoffer Tornerhielm.
At the other end of the aesthetic spectrum come a number
of videos such as AC9’s soundtrack to a sillysweet
story of a couple of Star Wars plastic figures who fail
to win at PacMan until they enlist the help of a third
figure and then triumphantly achieve a high score and
Marcus Wrango’s video for Role Model
has tiny figures riding little motorised trikes about
city streets to amusing effect.
Given space and time there are more tracks I’d
like to mention and although not all of the music or
visuals are memorable, there’s a high enough percentage
of great music married to great visuals that I’m
happy to add this disk to my expansive collection of
music DVDs (thereby doubling it…)
Colin Buttimer
4/5
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