by Matty McPherson (@ghostplanetmatt)
Lina Tullgren, the Captured Tracks-signed artist with two LPs under their belt, has been thinking about making more than “song” based music. While 2017’s Won and 2019’s Free Cell were albums of deft slowcore and confrontational, grounded lyrics, they did not really yearn to be listened to like typical indie rock. Close listens with both LPs revealed frameworks that were encompassing washed out droney reverb (“Red Dawn”) or straight folksy improv (“Golden Babyland”). Even their live shows for Free Cell, with Tullgren backed by just a friend playing “atmospheric synth, clarinet, and saxophone,” were drawing from ideas of music that was sparser and more singular. In between all that, they’ve been cooking up the "Back to You" radio show on KPISS.FM, which seems to dig up an eclectic array of pop and improv.
The timing then, for Ba Da Bing’s new cassette series could not be better for Tullgren. The series is an effort to feature artists creating music unlike anything they have done before. For the inaugural edition, Tullgren has reunited with their first instrument, the violin. While featured in fleeting moments on Free Cell, Tullgren instead recasts their fate with the instrument in the form of veracious improvisations. It imparts a new language of sound, moving through the few crystalline zones with a tenderness and curiosity.
Leading off with “Gravel Foot,” Tullgren begins to strike up a space with the cavernous hum of this raw material, subtly moving and taking in the silence. Churning the violin’s sharpened sound with grace, they build tremendous walls of melody up meticulously, stretching out these notes to revel in the delicacy of this sharp, brutalist design. At other moments, Tullgren imparts faint tremors, only to have quick string maneuvers slash out great bursts of tonal dissonance. They uncurl like razor springs. In the final minutes, Tullgren utilizes gate filters, playfully encroaching around a bouncy limit point where their violin practically disintegrates.
It’s a welcome movement that becomes further refined on Side B’s two tracks. The former, “Put a Pin in It” centers its focus around glacial one-note gashes. Although it may seem minimal, when looped and pasted on top of one another they create a sublime drone where time is rendered motionless. The latter, “Centerline Rumble Strip,” further minimizes its sounds. Swaths of festering silence invoke a greater emphasis on room acoustics and pinpoint noises. Suddenly, robust bouts of violin pierce through, literally soaring for the heavens. Maintaining a steady balance of both elements, the track ends having attained an equilibrium state.
The three improvisations of Visiting do a dedicating job of working off of each other. Utilizing the lessons learned on Side A’s movement, Tullgren warps the violin into dazzling excavations of time and space on side B. It all works not just to reintroduce Lina Tullgren as a new conductor of viciously dense drone, but make you wonder when Tullgren is to spearhead an Astral Spirits quartet into the great unknown.