Lisa Ullén
Heirloom
SWEDEN FÖNSTRET F8 LP (2024)
We’ve been hearing this talented Swedish player for a few years now mostly in various collaborative and group settings, but this one might be the first time we heard her solo. In all that time I had not appreciated that she was born in South Korea, and came to Sweden as a young child when she was adopted, She kept her little box of belongings when she made the trip across the seas, and that’s a photo of it on the cover of today’s release. Thereafter we learn no more about its contents, even though the title Heirloom might suggest objects of sentimental value or attachment to a family, nor do we learn much more about her historic exodus from this record, except perhaps the telling sentence about “this is music that stems from an experience of not really belonging to anything”.
She’s referring directly to the genre-free approach of her compositions here, the way they elude categorisation in a graceful manner without getting insistent about it. But she might also have in mind something about her own identity, allowing a subtext of “who am I” to inform some of these tense, abstract passages of piano music. Not quite jazz, nor identifiable anywhere on the spectrum of classical avant-garde / new music, yet trace elements may show up on the detecting instruments of devoted scientists. Significant gaps between notes, odd sounds emerging from what might be a prepared piano, but prepared in a way that doesn’t owe a huge repayment loan to the estate of Cage, J. Unexpected dynamics, as though she were thinking in real time about her personal philosophy and history, and seeking the mot juste to express it in essay form. I’m particularly taken with ‘After Sun’ the long piece which ends side one of this vinyl LP, which transplants this fragile form of chamber music in an unfamiliar setting resembling an attenuated lower-register motorised whine (actually it may simply result from a distorted foot pedal on the piano), and somehow cultivates new blooms from this replanted bulb.
A palpable sense of doubt has rarely seemed so approachable in accessible in musical form; anyone can generate reams of self-pity and harrowing despair, but here one senses a tough-minded individual who bears her burden with dignity. I may however be discerning more emotional truth and honesty than she cares to admit to, as her own emphasis is on the musical form of Heirloom, referring to “several layers where different textures and rhythms pass through each other”. I like the sense that it might possible to interweave musical passages in this open-ended framework fashion, as if spinning on a gigantic loom. The material is repeated on the B side in variations, making good use of the LP format, and suggesting something about an “in between” state. From 23 February 2024.