Air.
Try visualizing air.
If you’re like me, that is most likely a very pleasant task. Air to dive into. Float into. Gaze into. Out of the window. Sounds familiar? So you float into your airy task and you might start seeing the sky high above the ground. Maybe a bird flying across it. Maybe some dramatically lit clouds – or maybe just some dull grey ones. Or maybe you’ll see space. Planets. Astronauts. Or maybe a minimalistic photograph where 5% consists of a flat ground, and the rest being the sky.
How post-modern of you!
Fortunately we won’t need to make air into music. That was a task for Heinali. It was almost as if he came across a piano in the middle of a departed war zone while hiding long ago – so, pardon the introducing mumbojumbo, this review will dive into air any second.
It’s hard passing on a record like Heinali’ ’Air’ without stamping it: timeless. What you get is the not so original, but the not so easy to place in time atmospheric blend of strings and repeating piano themes. So what weighs most for you? Because how are you really to tie these factors together? I’ll leave that question unanswered and gaze into the air again.
Heinali’s kind of music is the easily layered into a black & white documentary kind of music. So, nothing new, but oh! so pleasant after, say, a stressful day rushing through the modern world including amounts of polluted air amongst other stressed human beings, with their blank looks, inhaling that same air. Oh, and doesn’t this airy music fit perfectly into that modern world of those blank looks gazing into nothing? Another question remains unanswered which I’ll blame the air I’m floating into again for.
The standout tracks for me are his shorter songs, ’Scarf’ and ’October’, and if just one; his interpretation of the tenth month of the year. During this nostalgic peek Heinali brings a slightly less dominantly repetitive theme together with the sweet atmosphere of, say, your grandma’s house – and all you can think of is staying true to this moment where you gaze at those neatly collected old photos of your relatives’ faces surrounded by the textured wall, but you know this moment will end, so you take a look out the window where the last leaf just starts sweeping through the air towards the ground.
The standout reference is Goldmund. That’s another sucker for mellow piano atmospheres for you, so if you’ve already discovered Heinali’s pleasant air transformed into a timelesss musical expression you might want to continue with the album ’Corduroy Road’; truly beautiful piano music from the outstanding Type label. But of course: first you will have to float, gaze or dive into:
Air.
Out now on Fluttery Records.
Posted by Bjarte Edvardsen.
