Sven Wunder: adventures in archival wonderland
Transmissions from a parallel universe of time-travelling frequencies
The work of Swedish composer and multi-instrumentalist Sven Wunder is an expansive meditation on late 20th-century genres- but let us start at the beginning.
"Eastern Flowers” (2020) is the debut LP by Wunder and it's a blast for any discerning music lover with a penchant for the exotic.
It's also his most upbeat and funky record, the rest of his output remaining within the esoteric archival narrative typical of his output but opting for more relaxed library/ easy-listening references.
Far from a discreet aural background, “Eastern Flowers” confronts the listener aggressively with guitar-centric, heavy psychedelic rock, wild Balkan riffs, and improvisational clarinet solos, spiced with the odd spaghetti Western dance number, mariachi horns with threatening auras and volcanic eruptions of demented prog-rock solos: it's the kind of record that an eclectic, vintage-world-music-loving band like Khruangbin might include in one of their most oblique and raucous party playlists.
Although a contemporary work originally released in 2019, one could easily pretend it is some lost recording from some long-forgotten folk-influenced garage band in late '60s Eastern Europe, or a cassette tape showcasing rarities from the vinyl collection of a truly idiosyncratic, obsessive vinyl collector.
According to Stockholm-based Wunder, who releases all his work on his own label Piano Piano Records, the music takes us “somewhere around the easternmost part of the Mediterranean Sea, around the Levantine Sea, painting a colorful portrait and illustrates the regions flora through sound”
In the fragmented mosaic of Wunder's illustrative compositional method, colors and tones collide, propelled by the momentum of both tradition and innovation.
The melodies traverse popular and folk, weaving a tapestry adorned with the florid imagery of tulips, red roses, and hibiscus, all popular décor motifs set against the backdrop of a technologically saturated world.
With strokes alternately bold and nuanced, the musical canvas evokes a sense of acceleration: the sound is intricate like lace, jewel-toned like a tapestry, lush yet non-representational.
Drums pound with the urgency of impending catastrophe, while synthesizers and basslines create an atmosphere charged with anticipation. In its embrace, psych, and prog enthusiasts find solace amidst the chaos, while folk and jazz connoisseurs discern echoes of a bygone era.
Wabi Sabi, Wunder's sophomore effort, is the kind of record one might encounter in a second-hand record store specializing in the unexplored niche between Southeast Asian psychedelia and exotic funk.
The lilting twang of traditional Japanese instruments like biwa (three-stringed lutes) koto and other zither-like plucked organs is supported by the softest of funky breaks, Moog riffs, Wurlitzer flourishes, wah-wah guitar licks and swooning string chords, their heady groove often unbalanced by a wild synth solo or jamming keyboards.
The mood is not always frantic – the sublime tenderness of a flute-led melody over gentle high hats offers a moment of romantic bliss, while Dave Brubeck-like jazziness succeeded by cinematic strings hovering over more trip-hop beats.
By welcoming the beauty of imperfection and simplicity, Sven Wunder applies the timeless wisdom of wabi sabi filtered through Ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”), which illustrates the transience of everyday life, as well as follows in the tradition of Japonisme, the study of Japanese art, and more specifically its influence on European works.
The fusion of Min'yō with jazz-rock conjures a liminal tableau: within this assemblage, the haunting melody of the Western concert flute, resonating with echoes of the Renaissance and Baroque eras, intertwines with the ethereal strains of the bamboo flute ("shakuhachi"), flourishing during the Edo period (1603-1868). Meanwhile, the guzheng, an ancient Chinese zither with a lineage spanning millennia, intersects traditional Japanese folk motifs with the rhythmic pulsations of modern percussion and 20th-century electronic instrumentation.
“Natura Morta” (2021) is a record reminiscent of an early '70s easy-listening orchestra LP.
It's a rewardingly generous listening experience, featuring wide expanses of luxuriously symphonic sounds supported by strong percussive structures, their confident arrangements a wall of sound mainly achieved by layering mellifluous strings over soft, semi-improvisational melodies led by synthetic keyboards, reedy flutes, muted horns or gently strummed acoustic guitars.
The lounge aesthetic is pervasive but not quoted in any ironic manner – the musical ethos adheres earnestly to the ear-pleasing manifesto of elegant '70s soundtracks for achieving an equalized, smooth, soothing, silky adult sound – think of the disarming conviction expressed by Italian masters of the dramatic like Stelvio Cipriani or Pierro Piccioni even at their most excessively bombastic or cloyingly sentimental.
Late Again, Wunder's latest LP (released in 2023), veers more decisively towards '70s soul and soft funk, uncannily recalling the mellower edges of the mid-1990s Pork Recordings empire run by Fila Brazilia frontman Steve Cobby – think foggy horns, spaced-out flute solos, reverberating rhythm guitars, slow, nocturnal beats, lightly sprinkled key riffs, improvisational resolutions.
As the album progresses, the effect consolidates into a super mellow chilled funk vibe, an intimate, sophisticated sound last attempted successfully by such underground trip-hop legends as the Solid Doctor and the Heights of Abraham, whose own work was referencing the lighter cosmic ramblings of Alice Coltrane at her most sedate and Miles Davis at his most laid back and flirty.
Now and again, a penchant for easy-listening politesse tempers everything, cooling the temperature, restraining any experimental edges with seductive charm.
The comparatively short running time of each track keeps things tight and fresh – brevity is the soul of wit, after all.
Examining the many singles Wunder has released, one meets the same ethos – a meticulously achieved manufactured resemblance to musical styles that are, paradoxically, as familiar to the ear as they are difficult to label.
Over-enthusiastic soundtrack made for budget-holiday crime caper filmed on the cheap during the summer of '62 in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat? Aural wallpaper for a VIP lounge at a Palm Beach resort in 1971? Relaxed funk for a high society beauty parlor in New York circa 1965?
Inspiring many fleeting images, and contemplative moods while exhibiting a cultivated sense of aesthetic humor, Wunder chooses a combination of sounds whose differences are less defined and more akin to slight adumbrations of shifting tonal nuances, an aural trope that recalls the temporal significance accorded to tonal palettes in the visual arts, like the subtle gradations of a narrow color spectrum in an airbrushed sunset postcard – idealized, warm, formal yet also charming, and evocative in a stylized manner, as if memory and its connotations have a specific grammar, subject to the evolution of time: soft pastels for the 1950s, luminous Technicolor for the 1960s, faded Kodachrome for the 1970s. Accordingly, music can be subject to similarly codified tonal semaphores and assortments of inherently meaningful hues.
Αs the present moves further away from the past, their co-existence becomes all the more obvious, a layering of timelines whose synchronicity does not alter the nature of either, their concurrent dialogue creating many possible futures, whose overlapping existence can only be regarded as possible in retrospect since any prophecy must be memorable if true.
It's the sonic equivalent of a time machine, yet another proof that memory exists only as a betrayal of history.
Text written by Panagiotis Chatzistefanou, Berlin, March 2024