Espen Lund is an avant-garde drone doom musician from Norway that mixes the aforementioned genres with free jazz and noise. Now while saying this I must admit that I had never heard of him before his 2021 album, and that is kind of a bummer, as the album packs some pretty awesome material.
One might think that feedback laden noisy avant-garde drone doom with free jazz elements is not something all that unique as there are quite many bands operating somewhere along these lines and often not making anything particularly innovative or at least interesting. However this is not the case with Espen Lund, as he approaches these genres from a somewhat new perspective of the electric trumpet, and well when I hear electric trumpet, then that gets my attention far better than another guitar based band. The album itself packs 5 mostly rather lengthy tracks. First of them is titled 'As Above, So Below', which some of you might know is also a title of a horror film from 2014. Not sure these is a connection here, but the atmosphere and vibe of the track is indeed quite foreboding and ominous. For me the track sounds like a mixture of Earth, Sunn 0))), Li Jianhong, Mats Gustafsson and Bellows (not the shitty indie band but the one from Providence that makes use of sax and sousaphone), and as Lund is from Norway then this track could perhaps fit to the soundtrack of Valhalla Rising or any series or films dealing with norsemen and bleak yet majestric landscapes of Norway in the scenes. The first track of the album happens to also be my favourite. The second track 'For a Thousand Tongues to Sing' also has a similar vibe and pretty much kicks ass in its noisy drone bliss. The shortest track 'Speak Into His Good Eye' is perhaps the closest this album comes to experimental noise and does have a certain Merzbow vibe to it and indeed sounds like something out of a horror film soundtrack. 'The Creator's Voice' also has a pretty heavy vibe to it with the likes of Sunn 0))) and Khanate coming to mind, and it is pretty cool how Espen Lund makes use of the trumpet in producing all of this. The last track 'An Echo Repeated Forever' has a pretty appropriate title as far as I am concerned with its slow and not so heavy echo laden beginning leading to another blissful noisy drone infused avant-garde abyss with somewhat of a Skullflower vibe to it in its ascending and transcending nature.
All in all the album is pretty solid from start to finish and as far as noisy experimental avant-garde drone doom made by making use of an electric trumpet goes, then this album is definitely one of the more interesting ones in recent months if not years. Espen Lund should suit anyone who is into Earth, Sunn 0))), Li Jianhong, Merzbow, Bellows, Skullflower and Mats Gustafsson and those whose ears are raised now should head over to Lund's bandcamp to get one of the tapes before they run out.
https://espenlund.bandcamp.com/album/tonal
