2015. Edition of 300.
Maar is recorded in Gent, Malmö and Göteborg during 2015. Organ, field recordings, electronics, guitar, voice and tape works by Dan Johansson and Sofie Herner. Mastered by Linus Andersson at Elementstudion. Original front cover photograph by Giorgio Sommer, ‘pompei impronte’, ca. 1888, courtesy Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Album design by Mathieu Serruys & Joris Verdoodt.
79 BC: the eruption of Mount Vesuvius covers the ancient Roman city of Pompei with tons of ash. All of its inhabitants die and are buried forever. The imprints of their remains have been preserved for centuries. Today one can still gaze at the plaster cask of a perished dog, as if somebody did not want him to be forgotten.
Destruction and stillness are united in ‘POMPEI. Impronte’ (ca.1888), Giorgio Sommer’s photo of this dog. B.A.A.D.M. presented this iconic image to Sewer Election and Leda, as a source of inspiration for what now became ‘Maar’. Working together for this album under their solo monikers, sound artists Dan Johansson and Sofie Herner already collaborated on some of the most captivating Swedish experimental releases of recent years with their work as Neutral and as part of Enhet För Fri Musik.
Like the Pompei dog seems reaching to his tail, becoming a symbol of infinite being, this record emerges as a closed world or a vacuum, with two side-long tracks interminably referring to each other. With ‘Maar’ Sewer Election and Leda created a sound cask, an isolated sonic universe with no beginning nor end.
ATTN Magazine