John Eckhardt first came to our attention in 2015, when The Wire published an article about his album FORESTS. The album contained two hours of double bass on a USB stick, lovingly nestled in a tangle of moss, lichen and bark from his family’s Swedish forest. This attention to physical detail was extended on Bass, Space and Time, recorded as Forresta on moss green vinyl, featuring bass, electronics, and a buyer’s choice of 100 covers. Then there was the CD The wicked Path, recorded as Fatwires, showcasing drum and (real) bass, although with less of a aesthetic appeal (although to be fair it was released during the heart of COVID). This year the artist returns with another tactile treasure in a fourth format, with a fourth combination of instruments: Taffel, Tramp Orgel, Mbira, Alto Recorder, Harpeleik. The cassette is combined with fourteen postcards and a forest artifact in a sturdy russet-tinted box. We can think of no other musician who changes not only instruments, but formats with every release; Eckhardt is the epitome of an experimental artist.
The one constant is Eckhardt’s love for the forest. Each release contains music that conjures the wooded element, whether directly or through suggestion: music that grows, sprouts branches and blooms, yet remains grounded through dirt, seed and root. PALEODUBFOLK is no exception. This “ecological narrative” honors both land and landscape, as well as the conditions which led to the creation of the instruments: in this instance, family heirlooms, a yard sale find and an abandoned harmonium. The slag stone contained in each linen box, formed at temperatures over a thousand degrees Celsius, is a byproduct of iron ore, a key component of the development of civilization.
When Eckhardt plays these instruments, he renews his conversation with space and time. The antiquity of the instruments reveals part of their history: abraded strings and keys, breath where breath once was, fingers where fingers once were, wood where there once was a tree. Each of the instruments has its section, taffel (a grandmother’s square piano, earlier used for banquet music) begins and end the set, while others lie in-between. In the prologue and the epilogue, the silence between the notes of the Tafelmusik is as important as the notes themselves, allowing the notes to resonate without interruption, conveying an unspoken history through watery echoes. In contrast, the aptly named “Tafel Cloud” collects textures, growing into a rainstorm-like drone. Toward the end, the storm separates into a flood of droplets as the use of the inner strings is revealed, gracing the album with its most singular segment.
The Zimbabwean mbira (thumb piano) was a gift from faraway lands, and Eckhart manages to tease timbres from the instrument that one would have thought impossible. Also known as “the voice of the ancestral spirits,” the mbira seems here to conjure visitations, channeling its heritage, especially in the ghostly back half of “Mbira Bow.” Ironically (and certainly intentionally) the very end of the track is similar in timbre to the droplet section of “Tafel Cloud.” “Mbira Ants” is much quieter, although it seems (perhaps due to name alone) to contain amplifications of an ant colony, communicating not only the work done on the earth, but that which unfolds below.
The Norwegian Harpeleik (which actually originated in Sweden, invented by Adolf Larsson) yields the album’s most percussive cut, something one might not predict from a zither, even one including chords. Due to its trancelike, rhythmic tapping, “Harpeleik Pulse” sounds like part of a drum circle, an exercise in which the artist fades into the sound. The chords are also showcased on “Harpeleik Kraut,” their note decay similar to those of the prologue and epilogue. This piece then connects to “Harmonium Chord,” chords fading into tempo in the middle before reappearing. “Harmonium Song” is thinner and reedier, while “Harmonium Patterns” conjures images of sewing machines and early machination.
The alto recorder appears on “Flute Trio” and “Flute Solo;” passed down from his late mother. The flute channels breath: the breath that gave life, the breath of history, the breath of connection, but also wind: the wind that blows through the forest, the winds of change. Connecting with ancestry and land, Eckhart draws a straight line from the past through the present to possible futures, these instruments perhaps not ending up with him, but passed down through legacy to others, or left to fertilize the land, like wood and skin and bone. (Richard Allen)
a closer listen 