De Stijl Rec. 
Jakob Olausson : Morning & Sunrise (S,2011)****/***°
It has been a while since we heard of Jacob Olausson. His new album on bizarre and loner records label De Stijl records looks like as if it’s also a reissue of some older artefact. On the first two tracks the bizarre aspects were less, the loner aspect was more dominant, accompanied by three guitars, two electric, endless improvising, in a complaining, somewhat tiring mood. On the third track, the voice, with vocal overdubs is mixed even more to the background but this fits well actually. A restrained slow drum rhythm is slightly slowed down off-the-rhythm, this fits well with this off-the-world too, while the song melody and chords aren’t unusual at all, the sound mix makes it all fit well to something more unique on its own. The song after this gets better with more clarity, with nice guitar picking and with a taking-the-time-singing melancholy with deep voice. It’s a song wondering what someone/people live for. The next song returns to the different layers of guitars, and the almost dissolved-in-the-background voice, the melancholy being taken over by the different guitar moods, one more voice wordlessly crying with the guitar, with one sentence echoing on ripples in time. The next track is once more strangely mixed with the voice not too much to the fore, with different guitars in endless melancholy. Some nice (in this way always psychedelic sounding) organ can be heard. I love this kind of unusual mix of the music (the usual ego-confident music uses a predictable balance of voice, guitar, bass and drums, this sort of mix proves that a restrained confidence sounds perfect in musical balance with a different sort of mix ; this also sounds honest and faithful to the full amount of inspirations, making a thoughtful creative balance with it). The next track is back with the slow drumming and all the different guitars, with a sleepier form of a Neil Young kind of melancholy in the guitars, the song (with clear lyrics) is sung with similar voice overdubs. The last track, with additional drums and different guitars, drifts further on the melancholy, the song coming out well, he also whistles the melody along.
This new album is different to the previous album and fits perfectly with the label’s perspectives. It shows vision of the musician in respect to the loner aspects present.
