ANEKDOTEN - A Time Of Day

“Finally we are on our way, where no man’s gone, launching deep into the great unknown” are the first lines that reach our ears just seconds into this “A Time Of Day”. It's hard not to read them as a metaphor for the artistic journey of this Stockholm outfit. Where no one has set foot before: now – by virtue of the evident sources of inspiration behind Anekdoten, mainly traceable to the 1970s (the early incarnations of King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Pfm and dozens of other shadings that also brush up against the ambient landscapes of Brian Eno), but also detectable in more contemporary sounds (Mogwai, Radiohead, Early Day Miners and a taste for early-80s new wave) – their alchemy is certainly something unique in terms of musical balance and gift for synthesis.

“A Time Of Day” carries on and develops, as every other album by the Swedes does, from exactly where its predecessor left off: “Gravity” had been a vessel brimming with changes, shifting the emphasis and the quest for the showy passage that had defined the band's more “prog” phase, moving toward a mature pursuit of sonic atmosphere, crafted with the sublime flavour of essentiality and, at the same time, with a search for melodies that are perhaps more exposed, but far less worn down by time and repetition.

And so on the new record, a superb track like “A Sky About To Rain” (and its coda “Every Step I Take”, a post-rock crescendo that strongly recalls Explosions In The Sky) could serve as the subject of a doctoral thesis in musical syncretism, so thoroughly do countless experiences and subplots converge and collapse within it, fused into a single melodic lava flow, that we can safely say Anekdoten have by now carved out a unique furrow in ground so saturated with influences that it's impossible to trace their origin.

Elsewhere, the game of spot-the-reference is easier: take “In For A Ride”, a sort of amplification of the Caravan mindset, or “King Oblivion”, where clear echoes of Ultravox resurface, or “30 Pieces”, which tries to reclaim the most emotionally pure side of the progressive philosophy.

The album closes with the mournful “Prince Of The Ocean” (“…passando a rassegna memorie, dissezionando sogni, cercando visioni e grandi schemi perduti, idee mezze crude sono tutto ciò che ho trovato, nessuna guida per il mio futuro, nessuna prospettiva di ciò che diverrò….”: Jan Erik Liljeström's lyrics are a black hole in the soul), an episode unprecedented in the Swedish band's history, one that comes close to touching on the anguished territory of No-Man's “Together We're Stranger”.

We may not feel quite as truly launched and lost in the depths of the “Great Unknown” evoked by the opening words of “A Time Of Day”, but it's always sweet to be shipwrecked in this particular sea.

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30/07/2007