Linnea Talp

With Variations for Light Waves, Swedish composer doubles down on the focus and intensity that characterised her 2022 solo debut, Arch of Motion. As with that album, Variations for Light Waves trains its focus on the breath and hum of the pipe organ, but it further elevates the deep listening and rich poetry at the heart of Talp’s compositions. Its seven pieces each find a sweet spot on her chosen instrument and then ruminate on its possibilities, in a manner that allows the instrument’s character to be unveiled, gently, patiently, as though being teased out of hiding.

Talp’s journey to where she is now has felt similarly steady and paced. After breaking cover in the late 2010s with her song project, Deerest, with which she released several cassettes and one album, 2020’s Cochlea, Talp dove into improvisation and minimal composition. But there was already a hint of the attention to listening and sound in the title of that Deerest album, the spiral-shaped space in the inner ear containing the sensory organ that’s fundamental to the human capacity to hear. Listening - and listening carefully - is core to Talp’s practice.

On Variations for Light Waves, attentive listening helps Talp sculpt seven pieces as elegant as they are eloquent. They were recorded over the past four years on various pipe organs across Sweden; Talp has particular fondness for “a small, beautiful pipe organ in a funeral chapel outside Stockholm, Lötsjökapellet, an incredible space for listening.” From there, Talp brought in collaborators Christer Bothén (contrabass clarinet) and Mats Äkelint (trombone) to contribute to several of the pieces.

Such is the sensitivity of these two musicians that their contributions merge seamlessly into the aerated flow of Talp’s pipe organ performances. “Air On Both Sides”, an improvisation with Bothén, was the album’s starting point, recorded in 2022 by John Chantler; it’s a radiant, luxuriant bathing in glowing tonality, stretching gently across almost eleven minutes. From there, Talp explored the capacities of the various instruments she encountered, wanting “to hear and highlight the very quiet and delicate sounds that an organ can produce.” Sometimes, she folds in recordings made on the Buchla, juxtaposing the acoustic with the electronic.