This music reflects an enhanced ambient approach to established tracks that once contained more beats, only leaving the key elements of the music, and also working with different combinations of lowpass-filtering, slowing down, adding reverb, and mixing the music differently.
An enhanced ambient approach
Subtracted means the beats have been removed, precisely for increasing the ambient depth, and I believe that it works. The sometimes restless and even urgent pressure of the dance beats are gone, leaving the restful and expansive textures and oceanic, continental and sub-Arctic landscapes. Johan Agebjörn’s musical career has been in two worlds, disco and ambient. This music reflects an enhanced ambient approach to established tracks that once contained more beats, only leaving the key elements of the music, and also working with different combinations of lowpass-filtering, slowing down, adding reverb, and mixing the music differently. The results are different approaches to familiar tracks, with a young Swedish Dad’s perspective on getting the little ones to bed, which also provides for excellent sleep music, you can take this into your best rest nest with zest.
The first track comes from the first of many exciting albums created as collaborations with Mikael Ögren, We Never Came To The White Sea, “Four Hours To Karhumäki (Subtracted Version)” (5:28) and starts with the piano, and voices sing tones. Lots of relaxed and somehow smooth and still kinetic energy rushing past, from inside a train looking at the industrial landscape shaking and flickering by. This time, on this track, the edges are all cooled off. “Swimming Through the Blue Lagoon (Subtracted Version)” (5:08) allows glowing turquoise and crystal pure water that is skin temperature to flood your immediate zone. I am thinking “one two three,” the voice flickers and things slow down, then returns to the “one two three…” This track was originally released on The Mountain Lake.
Things slow things down, emerging tones from the subtle distances are coming slowly closer, maybe this is digitally dancing in slow motion while at a high altitude. Everything is slow and expansive, “Ambient Computer Dance (Subtracted Version)” (5:31) was first heard originally on Mossebo. “As I Passed the Vyartsilya Border Crossing (Subtracted Version)” (7:43) was found originally on the album We Never Came To The White Sea, brings looped vocal tones to create a rich atmosphere, there might be flutes but I think it is the electronics. This “Subtracted” way is pearly-dreamy, imagine all the soothing and repeating chromatic patterns floating about, now free from the tyranny of the beat.
Emerging tones from the subtle distances are coming slowly closer ::
This next one has a close sexy voice speaking quietly and romantically for a few moments, whispering. I imagine making tiny warm promises, a very intimate feeling, with rising and falling tones and at last it rains in the end, perfectly soothing. “Sleep In My Arms (Subtracted Version)” (5:41) was originally on the album Sally Shapiro: Disco Romance. Sally Shapiro is mainly a ”neo-Italo disco” project consisting of a female singer (whose real name remains a secret) with Agebjörn acting as a composer and producer.
Now. My fave. This one is sweet and sleepy and I listen to it more than most of my collection of so-called favorite tracks. Maybe I have said too much, I want you to listen to this track and if you like it, smile because you might go soaring into the hidden colors in a night winter sky. “Dulciter Somni (Subtracted Version)” (5:00) was featured originally on Mossebo. The singer is Lisa Barra from Gothenburg, Sweden. Next. Now. Change comes. In the melodic framework I hear some actual field recorded sounds of a train ride, perfectly placed within the mix. I can sense the railroad tracks down below, rattling and rumbling. Maybe you can feel the train sway as the landscape shakes past. You can hear the landscape race by, as along into the frozen darkness we go. This is where it gets me, where the locomotive tracks cross the road and there are bells ringing. Maybe I am dreaming of a train in the winter, you can see the snow over the tracks ahead as the train continues, all the while responding to the lurch and bumps of the train’s forward motion, just below the surface of the tonal melodics, rattling and swaying through the night, “Siberian Train Part II (Subtracted Version)” (7:52) originally on Mossebo. Pulling this all together and bringing us home, “Zero Gravitation (Subtracted Version)” (9:59) is a slow motion ballet in the sky using light and color, and originally on Various Artists: Soundcolours pres. Chilltronica – A Definition
Subtracted Soundscapes is available on Spotted Peccary. [Bandcamp]
