*Edition of 200* Solos II deepens the six-string poetics introduced by Anton Toorell on his 2022 solo debut Solos. The programmatic title suggests continuity, yet this second album is not repetition: it is a narrowing of focus that produces an expanded field of sound. Across three extended pieces - Volta, Cripta and Scala - the Swedish guitarist, composer and producer investigates tuning, resonance, physical coordination and architectural space with a remarkable sense of restraint. The music is rigorous but never austere, built on clear processes yet carried by a light, unassuming touch that lets every harmonic event arrive as a discovery.
Toorell’s central technique is unusual enough to invite spectacle, but he refuses virtuoso display. Playing two guitars at once, he places his left hand on one fretboard to work hammer-ons and pull-offs while his right hand plays predominantly open strings on a second guitar laid across his lap. The result is a continuous, interlocking stream of tones: fretted phrases cascade into ringing open strings, tones meet their altered reflections, and small shifts in fingering or tuning generate cascades of sympathetic resonance. Rather than sounding busy, the method gives the music a peculiar calm. Its complexity is embedded in the sound itself - in the way notes collide, blur, beat against one another and slowly alter the listener’s sense of harmonic gravity.
Throughout Solos II, something liminal seems to hover between the notes. It may be the heightened attention that emerges when repetition becomes a route toward transcendence, or the sense of a player allowing his instruments and environment to lead him somewhere beyond deliberate control. Toorell’s achievement lies in balancing those forces. He creates pieces sturdy enough to withstand extended listening, yet open enough for each performance detail - a momentary resonance, a change in the air, an imperfect attack - to bend the form from within.
Mixed by Toorell and mastered by Taylor Deupree, the album preserves that delicate relationship between clarity and depth, foregrounding the guitars’ tactile grain without sacrificing the room’s enveloping resonance. Design by Michell Zethson, finalized by Sara Lundén, and archival photography from Helmer Bäckströms arkiv / Tekniska museet complete a release that is as attentive to material and space as the music itself.
