Solos II

Description

Anton Toorell's second solo album, Solos II, deepens and intensifies the six-string language introduced on his first album, Solos (2022). Rather than broadening his horizon, the Swedish guitarist, composer, and producer refines his approach, focusing on the physical and sonic relationship between the musician, the instrument, and the tuning. The result is three long pieces with cascading tonalities, both controlled and light, whose conceptual frameworks always remain in the background behind the luminous sonorities Toorell draws from two guitars. Throughout Solos II, Toorell explores the guitar's potential for silvery, sometimes dissonant textures, as well as his own physical interaction with the instrument. On "Volta," "Cripta," and "Scala," he plays two guitars simultaneously: one fretted by the left hand using hammer-ons and pull-offs, while the right hand primarily activates the open strings of a guitar resting on his lap. Despite the inherent complexity of this approach, the music never feels overloaded or demonstrative. The technique remains discreet, serving Toorell's compositional instinct and improvisational sensitivity. The album makes room for unexpected resonances and happy accidents, while maintaining clear, robust structures with a subtle balance. "Volta," lasting seventeen minutes, unfolds like a shimmering continuum, its repeated patterns delicately reshaped by subtle inflections, creating a sense of constant motion. "Cripta" spirals in a hypnotic turn, evoking both the iterative minimalism of Terry Riley and the hallucinatory guitar loops of early Seefeel. With "Scala," which closes the album, the recording environment fully reveals itself. Captured in a 16th-century wine cellar of the Palazzo Stabile in Italy's Piedmont region, the space acts as a guiding presence and an implicit third instrument. Toorell tuned his guitars to the cellar's reverb, seeking configurations that would open the space itself. In Solos II, something elusive and liminal hovers between the notes, music both architectural and intimate, structured repetition yet animated by the human.