Tor Lundvall
Last Light

Tor Lundvall is a young American painter and musician. His recording adventure begins in 1998 with "Autumn Calls," a result of collaboration with a certain gentleman named Tony Wakeford; it is no coincidence that some of the most beautiful album covers of Sol Invictus bear his signature. I approached this "Last Light" (released in 2004, the first album released after the collapse of World Serpent Distribution) attracted precisely by the image depicted on its cover: the interior of a dimly lit bedroom, a window that opens to a quiet landscape of bare trees where the last rays of sun seem to gently fall, just before the blanket of night takes everything away. The imperceptible instant of twilight where light and shadow embrace and blend into a fragile and fleeting balance.

What to expect if not sweet folk with mystical and bucolic tones? None of this: Tor Lundvall becomes the author of a refined "ambient singer-songwriter" style imbued with intimate and deeply melancholic moods. The names that first come to mind are Satie and David Sylvian. The former for the minimalist attitude, as the pieces are built on few but intense piano notes, followed by long shadows of reverberations and ambient echoes. The latter for the ethereal imprint, for the delicate interplay between vocals, synthesizers, and electronic phrasings. But to be more precise, employing our discourse to musicians who could easily be placed among Sylvian's own disciples, we might argue that Lundvall's compositions evoke with simplicity certain atmospheres of the colder Porcupine Tree (those of "Russian On Ice," to be precise), his voice reminds quite a bit of a young Steven Wilson; or, what might come to our mind could be the slow ballads of Depeche Mode animated by the fragile voice of Martin L. Gore, or even the Ulver of "Shadows of the Sun," skilled weavers of music one might define as the perfect blend of ambient, electronic, and chamber music.

In truth, the music of this small great artist, who takes on all the instruments, carries within it its own peculiarity that makes it unique and entirely separate from the aforementioned musicians: Lundvall is skilled at outlining landscapes of the soul that differ little from what is produced through colors and brushes. A faithful reflection of his pictorial art (focused on bucolic landscapes often inhabited by isolated human figures; a technique that involves the use of vibrant colors and plays on a vigorous tension between light and shadow), his music evolves through shades and subtle variations of tone, with simplicity and exquisite naïve taste, through meticulous refinement work. Enveloping and alienating at the same time, the twelve tracks composing this "Last Light" seem to develop a single discourse, where few notes, imperceptible rhythmic variations, and the patient ambient breath ferry the listener to the places of their own childhood: an ideal childhood made of innocent games and autumnal landscapes, of bare trees, and a carpet of crunching leaves under the cautious step of those seeking unassailable hideouts in a vegetation stripped bare by cold and frost.

Meticulous attention to detail, the inlay of pieces, the calibration of sounds: a pointillistic ensemble that emerges in the refinement of parts, as if this music, instead of being the result of the progressive reduction of elements, was the careful and passionate development of a few ideas. A few ideas, but more than enough to build a true masterpiece, a jewel of pure emotional ecstasy, or, better yet, emotional stasis, as if the author wanted to photograph, capture, trap the emotion of an instant. A descriptive, didactic music that seems intent on pausing humbly at pure contemplation, a moment before a real awareness is realized, such that one cannot say this music lives off a true emotional climax: as it is born, so this music vanishes, without offering particular thrills, but enchanting the senses as long as it lasts.