Released in November 1974, it was the Big Bang of electronic dance music. “Autobahn” starts with a spark — a key turns, igniting cylinders in synchronized rhythm, the mechanical […]
Looking Back at Stina Nordenstam’s Proto-AMSR Tracks from the 1990s
Swedish singer, jazz musician, producer and songwriter Stina Nordenstam’s singular voice isn’t something you can easily shake, even 20 years after she stopped making records. With a distinctive, pitch-perfect whisper-rasp and a lazy way with phrasing that recalls a young, junked-up Chet Baker, her approach to vocalizing the songs she wrote seldom wavered, and you can still spot that tone and phrasing a mile away. As anyone who loves the Ying-Yang Twins early ‘00s ASMR-rap smash “Wait” or Serge Gainsbourg’s “Lemon Incest” knows, sometimes the best way to get someone’s attention is to go low and breathy. Listen to the trumpet solo (at 2:11) on “I See You Again.” It sounds like a wisp of deathbed brass.
The Stockholm-born Nordenstam’s discography includes Memories of a Color (1991), a jazz-tinged debut that seems influenced by Bjork’s Debut — until you realize that it came out two years before Bjork went solo. Nordenstam’s second album (and first to receive US distribution), And She Closed Her Eyes (1994), introduced more pop elements and embraced haunting keyboards and spacious rhythms; it vibes like some Scandinavian jazz take on Bristol trip hop.
The devastating Dynamite (1996) mixed delicate guitar and cavernous industrial sounds. People Are Strange (1998) was an uneven covers album (with a misguided version of “Purple Rain”). Her final two records before calling it quits, This Is Stina Nordenstam (2001) and The World Is Saved (2004), featured original, minimalist work that mixed electronic and acoustic elements. What connects all her recorded work is her intimate tone.
That Nordenstam never earned mainstream attention equal to the quality of her output isn’t surprising. To some, her voice can be a bit much, in a love-it-or-hate-it way, and though she records her vocals as if telling a secret, she can sound as cold as Nordic nights. He songs are often dark.
The grim video for “This Time, John,” certainly wasn’t aiming for mainstream MTV viewership. It’s a narrative clip involving a chase, a beatdown and a brutal discovery.
And She Closed Her Eyes, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, is an understated classic, a curious blend of cool jazz and acoustic folk. Her breathy AMSR sigh, a subtle instrument that carries the melody on most songs, recalls the restraint of Mark Hollis’s eponymous 1998 solo album.
Here’s “Little Star,” directed by Michel Gondry.
Nordenstam prefers vast spaces of minimal, precise instrumentation to support the delicacy of her voice. That voice, in its early form, floated like Billie Holiday’s, as heard on a 1991 live recording of her group Stina and the Flippermen. Turn this one up and focus on it.
Nordenstam’s final recorded appearances — though hopefully that will someday change — were as a vocalist on tracks by Nine Dead Horses, David Sylvian’s one-and-done band with electronic producer Burnt Friedman.
That was in 2007. Six years later she participated in a sound installation at the Swedish music festival Way Out West. In an interview in advance of that project, she discussed her approach to creativity, as well as her then-recent autism diagnosis. After telling an interviewer that she never considers the listener’s perspective when making music, she explained the reasoning: “It makes it more raw. It’s not treated by the consciousness, and since I make it somewhat subconsciously I don’t have a clear idea. When I present the work it hasn’t gone through consciousness, social awareness or thoughts about how it will be received.”
She added, “It becomes more direct – from one sub-consciousness to the next, in an unprocessed way. And even if you perceive it differently it doesn’t matter. I can never think about how things could be perceived. When I work with something I have absolute pitch of how things should be.”
Bafflingly, only one of Nordenstam’s records is currently available on vinyl, although over the years most have been pressed in limited batches. In June, Real Gone reissued her 2001 record, This is Stina Nordenstam, a killer recording co-produced by Mitchell Froom that features two duets with Suede’s Brett Anderson.