Stina Nordenstam

What does she sound like now? Is it really her metal album? mmm...

this is a request from the swedish singer stina nordenstam.

i am working on new material for my 7th album and want alien contribution. i want strangers to send loops, bits and pieces of non-musical sounds, documentary, everyday sounds - as well as beats. naturally it is potentially more interesting with sounds i can't associate to. the other thing i will be looking for is how the loops are constructed, put together. i don't want to be too specific as a lot of time the best is in the unexpected. so, i am not asking for any particular style. i want things out of the ordinary, with character, inspiring. in any way. i don't want songs. i don't want harmonies. i want construction pieces.

stina nordenstam

A friend of mine hooked me up with an album track as well and it's amazing.

Wow it's eight years since Dynamite. That was a fucking formative record for me in retrospect.

On another note, Stina is one of the few artists where I often have to emotionally prepare myself to listen to.

When I visited the UK about seven years ago, this was one of the things I specifically searched out (The Vulgar Boatmen's Opposite Sex being the other). I have listened to it once, maybe twice the whole way through. If I didn't go all that way for it, I'd have sold it a long time ago. Personally, I think it lacks the production that made her next one so special. The songs are kinda, eh. Download it.

and she closed her eyes

it took me a long time to warm to This is; I was disappointed when it came out, but when I went back to it a year later with fresh ears I found more to like. It's much more pop in many ways. I didn't even realize until yesterday that was Brett Anderson on it.

(the other one is now taken down)

Thanks

I'm tempted to hear the new album now, but I'm going to wait until I buy it. I'm going to buy it, regardless, but I've realized how unhappy I am when all the albums I want to buy I've already heard. There's just no excitement in that. I trust, of course, that I'll be able to find the album when it's out... maybe I'll just bring my Stina list to Scratch and get them to order everything.

http://www.v2music.com/site/audioVideo.asp?avType=11

(scroll down to "S")

The combo of "From Caymen Islands With Love" and "The Morning Belongs To The Night" is particularly affecting.

re: Stina and Sylvian, I'm somehow convinced (with no proof whatsoever) she wrote "Greetings from the Old World" by way of a salute to him when he moved from England to America. I remember reading her generic explanation of the song on her Myspace site and adding (my) 2+2.

discovered her thanks to akm's mention in the cassandra jenkins thread and wow i love her first two albums, especially and then she closed her eyes. i really love all the sax, it feels like music i've been wanting to hear forever.

dynamite is intriguingly strange but hasn't quite clicked for me yet, it's quite a left turn but i'm hoping it will open up to me. it feels sonically of a piece with from the choirgirl hotel, but pushed further into that realm in a way that tori never did. the contrast between her quiet, deadpan vocals and the kinda industrial/post-punk backing is fascinating

looking forward to checking out the rest of her output

The first two Stinas are def the most aligned with the Cassandra Jenkins record (which is completely great), insofar as they have more light and warmth in them than her later albums - the 'sound' of early spring, watery tentative sunshine, lengthening days etc. Really brisk and fresh.

The subsequent Stinas all feel really bound up with autumn/winter to me, to varying extents - all are great but it's a much chillier vibe overall. Dynamite is the one that leans most into 'encroaching gloom'. FTCH is a really interesting comparison and one that hadn't occurred to me before.

I disappeared down a bit of a This is Stina Nordenstam wormhole upthread but I do still think it's her strangest record in that it tries to make a big (tiny) crossover pop record out of a fuzzier version of the Dynamite sonic palette and ends up sounding like some kind of plaintive alien bulletin or... something.

I think the World Is Saved is her best album. I wish she'd return to recording.

God I love 'Dynamite' so much. Dig 'This Is' and 'People Are Strange' and 'The World is Saved' and the rest. But 'Dynamite' stands out, for me. Such an elemental sound--those crunchy guitars paired with the Reich-ian strings, and her voice... An album that hasn't aged a day.

I'm afraid she's going to go the way of Mark Hollis--silent until silenced.

I feel like there's a big jump in skill and quality between albums one and two - And She Closed Her Eyes really codifies some qualities that define her subsequent work despite the massive stylistic shifts.

Like, the voice is the same but from the first line of "When Debbie's Back From Texas" you can hear how much more aware and deliberate her use of it is - this Rickie Lee Jones in an iron lung quality, superficially blank and stripped (or evacuated) of affect, yet perversely affecting. A quality that extends to her suddenly incredibly sharp lyrical economy, conveying entire worlds and personas with the smallest number of words possible.

"From Cayman Islands With Love" from The World Is Saved is a great example of this:

Half a day behind and miles away
I'm on a beach
The only one around I know who can't
Enjoy the heat
I bought the postcard
Now I have to write the words
I left the country
There's a chance you may have heard
Grand Cayman is great
Of course it is
Weather like this
Living is great
Of course it is
What else did you think
What else did you think
I said I want a man and not a boy
You left the room
The Caribbean sun so leaves me cold
You never do
I want to see you
Even want to see you bleed
I can't believe I paid for this
There's nothing here I need
Grand Cayman is great
Of course it is
Weather like this?
Living is great
Of course it is
What else did you think
What else did you think

... The deliberateness emptiness of "weather like this?"... I love it.

... That said, the last two tracks of Memories of a Colour are the best on the album, so if you listen to the first albums back to back it's like Stina is gearing herself up.

I bought "And She Closed Her Eyes" in 1994 when I was in high school - I think I bought "Park Life" (!) in the same haul. Mark Radcliffe had been playing "Little Star" every night on his Radio 1 late show.

Anyway, it's just the most beautiful record - I think it might be favourite ever album, the only album I've never gotten bored of listening to. I used to put in on with "Five Lives Left".

I can't believe The World is Saved was released 16 years ago. And look at idiot me above, thinking ten years was a long time.