Various Artists
Ny musik för landssorg
Container

Public radio does have its virtues: It gives weekly airtime to people such as Andreas Tilliander (former Swedish Grammy-Winner, present Kent-support gig, ever-productive multi-aliased electronic musician) to talk about and play electronic music in his acclaimed show "Ström" and, from time to time, it even lets said show hosts compile CDs. After a walk in the park with 2006's birdsong-remix CD "Pausfågeln remixad", the current topic, which translates to "New music for national grief", touches on more sombre grounds - its aim was to compile music that could be played on the radio in case of national grief, think tsunami or death in the royal family. Naturally, each of the record's 12 musician has their own personal concept of grief and expresses it through (more or less) crackling electronica in widely different ways. Ideally, such fragmentism could be enriching, as in the Pausfågel-compilation, but here it revives a familiar problem of compilations: some tracks truly stand out (to me: the more cut-up, less vocal ones) but others are more of the skipping-kind. It's a matter of taste, as always, but I think I'll stick with the Pausfågel-CD for now and wait for the next Ström-sampler.
- Arnulf Köhncke