Browse by Artist: PORN SWORD TOBACCO

Artist:	PORN SWORD TOBACCO
Title:	Explains Freedom
Label:	CITY CENTRE OFFICES (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	CCO 027CD

Henrik Jonsson hails from Göteborg, Sweden and this is his first full-length album and his second release for City Centre Offices. Last year, Jonsson, aka Porn Sword Tobacco, set the speed for the future of ambient-inspired campfire music. Reminding us of the possible greatness of pioneers like Harold Budd and Brian Eno, Jonsson managed to adapt the endlessness of a piano tone for our digital, laptop-based generation. Taking off in his comfortable domain of introverted crackles, nature sounds, and tiny piano fragments, Explains Freedom switches moods as fast as a turntablist changes his records and offers snapshots of a slow-motion world we all miss. "Eudaimonia" is a blueprint for your early morning wake up call, "Watt Towers" should play as a loop in every crib, "Talk is Cheap, Swords are Sharp" is what you feel when you see the sun coming up behind a big mountain, "Folkhemmet" is the dance the elderly dance when they fall in love and "Futuristic Rasta Money" makes you realize that Henrik Jonsson is not the person you thought he was. Explains Freedom is peaceful and hopeful -- as if the world is a flower.

Artist:	PORN SWORD TOBACCO
Title:	New Exclusive Olympic Heights
Label:	CITY CENTRE OFFICES (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	CCO 039CD

New Exclusive Olympic Heights is Henrik Jonsson's second full-length album and his third release for City Centre Offices. Having originally come to the music world's attention through 2004's self-titled muted masterpiece, Jonsson has edged off into more analog territory without losing the frayed sense of wonder that saw him compared with the likes of Harold Budd, Marsen Jules and Brian Eno. Recorded over a two-year period in the same studio which gave birth to the previous two Porn Sword Tobacco albums, New Exclusive Olympic Heights is an astonishing tapestry of sound and Swedish atmosphere that brings to mind images of sun-dappled clearings and unseen dusky threats. Swirled through with beads of static and crackle, this release is an epic doctrine in the power of ambient music, wherein Jonsson coaxes disparate elements into the kind of organic whole that is a million miles away from most of his peers. Opening with "Tools For Trains," the sheer weight of time spent away from 21st century life is drawn upon with remarkable ease as soapy waves of fizzing chords accrue filigree hisses -- before the whole composition fades into obscurity against the sound of a distant train passing by. Emotional in a way which is difficult to define, "Den Rosa Sporten" features frosted glass aesthetics and delicate acoustic guitar that are wrapped around the kind of music which Boards of Canada should be making. Seemingly in possession of a tacit understanding of what makes a piece of music both uncluttered yet thoroughly arresting, New Exclusive Olympic Heights oozes beauty from every pore and sees Jonsson firmly installed as a true grandmaster of this soundscape-rich music. With other highlights including the warm instrumental glow of "Pappa! Min Karlek Är Gravid" and "U.S. Saloon Interiors 41/59" with its Badalamenti overtones, Porn Sword Tobacco has consummately proven that isolation and a sense of wonder at your surroundings can conjure up the most magical of emotions.

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