Edition of 150 copies
Matching brooding, tense undercurrents of drone with strained soulfulness, Malcolm Pardon makes a notable shift in his creative approach on his third album. Where last year's The Abyss on Leaf continued his piano-focused ambient studies, on this occasion the Stockholm-based artist has left his primary instrument behind to explore the richly varied tones lingering in the background of his past compositions.
The genesis of Flesh & Bones lies in Pardon's extended performance alongside Gustaf Broms' Köttinspektionen exhibition in Uppsala, Sweden, where he was invited to soundtrack five hours of visuals and performance through pure improvisation. The sounds he generated on the last day of the exhibition became the starting point for Flesh & Bones' haunting suite of compositions. Even without the immediate guard rails of the piano, Pardon's accomplished history in composition rings through each melancholic refrain, but on this record the texture and spatial processing in his music comes to the forefront, aided in the mixing process by long time collaborators Aasthma (Peder Mannerfelt and Pär Grindvik).
The music on Flesh & Bones moves at a funereal pace, as 'Hidden Path' shapes out cavernous wells of low-frequency tone and 'Under Over' unfurls sustained synth-string blooms. There's romanticism and nostalgia buried in the chords as they slowly plot out a melodic narrative, but the layered nuance of the production keeps the overall impression of the music very much in the here and now.
Microcosms of static creep across the surface of the record, filling in the generous negative space around the main themes, while sub-bass occasionally rumbles underneath a note to add to the sense of foreboding. These details are understated, but essential to the overall identity of the record. Pardon's music has always been marked by subtle impressions of broader ideas beyond the immediate ambient and modern classical his work might be most readily associated with — in the yearning, woozy two chord refrain of 'Speaking In Tongues' you can hear the ghost of a dreamy house track while 'Flesh' has the nocturnal clamour that charged golden era trip hop with such a seductive atmosphere.
These are only the slightest of reference points though — Pardon's seasoned approach to dramatic scene-setting through sound (first developed alongside Mannerfelt as Roll The Dice) leads the music into its own captivating, compelling sphere, where emotions entwine and conjure strange new plains of expression.
The New Black, 2025