Music For Drifting is the debut LP from Aase Frejadóttir. Releasing on Editions Verde, and using synthesizers, field recordings, strings, and voice, Frejadóttir’s music isn’t afraid to switch things up. Straight off the bat, her music feels incredibly expansive while also remaining intimate and warm. There’s no doubt that the warmth is due to the synth, and it radiates from it, but its soft swells and the emergence of a new melody also helps to provide a benevolent atmosphere of awe and wonder that fits in with the warmer sound. Whether walking her dog, Pulsar, or drifting through the forests on the outskirts of Stockholm, Aase’s music appears to be a free spirit, in search of something more: extracting deeper meanings from the music, which is a glowing stream of distant light.
A lover of Astronomy from an early age, Aase’s music is interwoven with the black fabric of space, containing material from an infinite beyond, and she builds her spacious music upon its bedrock – the glowing light of dead stars and something of the cosmic is audible in her music. Strings burst forth and a radiant harmony bursts onto the scene with the royal elegance, grace, and supreme force of a bejewelled supernova. Her music is constantly shifting, turning, its refractions and reflections rebounding and moving from note-to-note.
Everything is tied to the Universe and the greater unknown, but although wide open arms and spatial possibilities are present on Music For Drifting, Aase never loses touch with what she and seven billion others call home, as heard in the more familiar, meteorological music of rain. That deluge of rain opens up ‘Dimma Promenad’, bringing us back to the soil and the earth, before transitioning into standout piece ‘Solemn Oath’ – twenty minutes of sweeping, orchestrated movements and patient drones. Cascading melodies glint and gently oscillate, and although the piece centres on a cluster of notes, it manages to evoke a ton of space and a reverential air fitting for a sacred oath.
The notes are as pure and blessed as Holy Water. Following on is ‘Aerial’, which, with its additional layering, immediately counter-balances the previous piece. It favours depth over a skeletal fragility, and plump notes over a slimmer variant. Companionship and friendship over a solitary, long-forgotten corner of space, like the Earth’s positioning in the Milky Way. The mood is one of reflection and contemplation, not looking to figure things out with scientific equations or facts about the Universe, but rather revelling in its being. One can believe in the theory of an animated Universe when listening to her music. It’s enjoying existence for what it is: glorious, painful, tragic, thrilling.