L'lle Volante :: East Of Gothenburg
Before the mysteriously meditative melodies and esoteric energies of his debut solo record “East Of Gothenburg” under the melodic moniker L’Île Volante, which he started drawing out sometime in the 2010’s, Björn Synneby, a Swedish musician from Gothenburg, who is now based in the wild wilderness of Jämtland, a county or län in Sweden that consists of the provinces of Jämtland and Härjedalen, along with smaller parts of Hälsingland and Ångermanland, previously occupied a performative place in local groups like The Sun, Pacific!, and Whyte Seeds before stepping into the sonic shades of a solo career. Recorded at his home studio with the iconic inspirations of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Victor Jara, Stereolab, and their 1997 classic “Dots and Loops”, and the late Gerry Mulligan’s 1963 masterpiece “Night Lights”, Synneby’s “East Of Gothenburg” splashes against the cosmic countryside, while simultaneously summoning the spiritual sounds, and tonal textures of the veteran musician’s narrative of nostalgia. Where one radical reality collides with another in this reflective body of work, you can feel the physical distance of California’s West Coast all the way from Sweden, over 5,000 miles away, in this cultural collection of songs and elemental entries from a faraway land, depending on where you rest your head at the end of the day. While the record is a harmonic and historical homage to his hometown of Gothenburg, the musician also expresses the atmospheric attempts and creative contemplation of cultural change, and the overall adjustment to the anatomy of memory.
The album’s interior intimacy reminds its listeners of perhaps the greatest conspiracy theory ever conspired in the rock and roll universe: the death of Paul McCartney in 1966. Now, if this legend is true, and it’s absolutely not, but let’s imagine it is for a brief moment, crazier things are at play in this day and age, maybe Synneby found McCartney’s mangled body after the car crash in a time travel experiment that actually worked, brought him back to life like the Victor Frankenstein tale, and the two collaborated on material for a brief period before Synneby’s return to modern day. With only a few hundred copies of the album pressed by the Swedish-based label, publishing house, and record store, Busy Bee Production, the album has the poetic potential for critical celebration for many decades to come through the ears and eyes of private press pirates, time-traveling technicians, and future fans. “East Of Gothenburg” is an instant classic.
