‘Nordic Patterns’ new album by Arin Aksberg in Peaceful Radio Show 1575
9 January 2024 Uncategorized
Scroll down and click on photo for Arin’s website.
Twenty-four-year-old Norwegian Arin Aksberg follows upon his 2023 Projekt debut with an album of sparse, sensitive ambience. Utilizing piano, synths & processing, he began with the idea to detach from the intimately personal to craft an abstract soundscape. Nevertheless, life got in the way of such plans: the music organically evolved, deeply influenced by concurrent life events. Nordic Patterns became a vessel carrying the weight and wonder of rediscovering his homeland at the same time as ending a relationship that traversed eight years of his life.
The tracks, charged with the spirit of the environment north of the Arctic Circle, are less about painting a vivid picture of Finnmark and more an invitation to perceive its essence.
“To me it’s mostly nostalgia,” Arin reflects. “The longing for what once was, and the curiosity of what’s to come. It’s the feeling of being present in these lovely surroundings. Working on a project like this, I appreciate the land much more because in everyday life you start to forget how beautiful it is here. Thinking about all the history in these landscapes where the Sami and the Norwegians have lived for centuries — now we’re living here and experiencing the same nature. Again back to nostalgia. I moved from Finnmark to the south at age 9. My ex-wife and I started dating at age 16 and 17; we’ve become adults together. In 2018 we moved back north to Alta and I got to re-experience the environment with her. In a way it’s honoring our memories here. Somehow it’s just a way for me to have a sort of closure on all of that.”
“Nordic Patterns isn’t really about showing you what my environment looks like. It’s more about sharing my view, memories and perception on traveling in these lands. Remembering childhood road trips — the world unfolding in stillness from the backseat watching all these structures going by while also traversing the emotional journeys that accompany adulthood and change. Like experiencing beauty and sadness at the same time; how does that make me feel?”
Tracks such as “Skaidi” capture the duality of life’s tempests and tranquilities, where the sounds of a rumbling waterfall next to a storm barrier become a metaphor for life’s unpredictable journey. In the last few years, Arin found both a new beginning and closure, experiences that manifest in the album’s bookending tracks — a tribute to this significant chapter in life.
Projekt founder (and Black Tape For A Blue Girl synthesist) Sam Rosenthal performs on the track “Homecoming.” Arin comments that Sam’s synths “add a warm, human touch to the song with a bit of unpredictability, which we all experience somewhere in life.”
“This album is an intuitive exploration,” Arin reflects, “one that does not seek definitive meaning but instead creates a space where meaning is both discovered and lost in the act of experience. I allowed instinct and introspective emotion to guide the composition.”
Nordic Patterns captures the character of its Nordic roots while journeying through the vast landscapes of human emotion.
Track Listing
1 A Time Given
2 Leaving Home
3 A Look Back
4 Flowing River
5 The Chapel
6 Skaidi
7 Cut Fjord
8 Homecoming (with Sam Rosenthal)
9 A Time Spent (Anja)
Benno Veugen Arin Aksberg, Nordic Patterns, Peaceful Radio, Peaceful Radio Show