By Jordan Anderson,foxydigitalis.com
Vrakets Position, a name which translates as “Wreck’s Position,” is the Swedish duo of Göran Green, an artist and art gallery owner, and Tommy Lindholm, a psychotherapist; this 2-CD set represents recordings culled from several decades of the group’s purely improvisational practice sessions.
Hopefully the band will keep excavating these archives (they have described recording hundreds of cassettes), as their songs–made up of a loud, drone-based form of rock music, with underpinnings of machine-made and electronic tones–is of high quality.
Interestingly, their lyrics are taken from the work of 11th-century Persian poet and philosopher Omar Khayyam, as well as sources such as William Blake, William Butler Yeats, and other major authors. Each song here is unique and sounds built up from many different instruments. As a unified album, the collection does often drag in places, however.
A piece which makes up the entire second CD, “True Sailing is Dead,” is perhaps the best track here, with slowly modified, very emotional sets of chords created out of looped synths and string arrangements making for very compelling music. Overall this is an unexpectedly good release, especially for such an obscure project.