In a relatively unlimited circulation of GAN animation, artist Birk Nygaard guides us through a continuously moving procession of painterly digital images, making noticeable the climatic kosmische of manufacturer André Bratten.
On Picture Music manufacturer André Bratten avoids the darker aspects of his previous releases to delve muchdeeper into the cosmic textures he hasactually checkedout throughout his profession. Focusing less on category than on stateofmind, Picture Music sees the artist integrating paired back strings, plaintive secrets, gauzy synthesis and fragile pieces of field recording to produces the most melodic and transcendent sounds of his profession. Leaning into the climatic kosmische Bratten hasactually tapped into for Picture Music, artist Birk Nygaard utilizes GAN animation to bring the album’s 13 tracks to life, producing a relatively limitless circulation of continuously moving images. Heavenly vistas significant with glinting cliff dealswith and towering naked worshippers melt into pastoral idylls inhabited with geodesic domes and senior couples. Alien landscapes pocked with emerald cities and ancient monoliths morph into radioactive trees beset with bioluminescent spores.
As we are brought muchdeeper into the painted world of Picture Music, the album’s escapist propensities endedupbeing completely understood. Recorded throughout the seclusion of numerous lockdowns and influenced in part by a reappraisal of what makesup ‘normal life, as well as the birth of his 2nd kid, Picture Music is created to conjure highlighted worlds to slip into, an impact brought to surreal life by Nygaard. Impossible figures occupy difficult locations, speculative animals perch upon speculative shapes, spooky in their algorithmic plausibility. As the album closes out with the reverb-heavy piano of ‘Evening’, the scene fixes into an image much better to house, a dubious forest scattered with wild flowers, a poignant rural coda in counterpoint to a stretching cosmic dream.
Picture Music is out now, on Smalltown Supersound. You can discover André Bratten on Instagram and Bandcamp. For more details about Birk Nygaard and his work, you can discover him on Instagram and checkout his site.
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