Supersilent 12 Rune Grammofon ***
Possibly the most elegantly contained band on the planet, their album covers give little away beyond some crisp typography, the tracks are just numbers and album titles prefer numerals to wordy company.
They’ve been doing this kind of Nordic ambient slow moving thing since the 1990s, godfathers of the style, if you like. 12 is the Nordic hipster minimalist kingpins’ first album in four years, the band’s resident genius Helge Sten, aka Deathprod, stirring himself since then to tour the band with Led Zep’s John Paul Jones to no little excitement and then return to his Halden studio in Norway and a certain museum with the scarily monumental reverb to make this album, the same place where Huntsville recorded Past Increasing Future Receding. Unrehearsed free improvising ever so slowly you might not be able to dig the crazy beat, granddad, but the layering and mastery of atmosphere is very cleansing and fascinating, the low rumbles and achingly-held sound shadows enough to make you want to jump on a plane to go find the Northern Lights pretty much immediately. SG
Listen to ‘12.1’ from 12 above
Released on 20 October