I think I got on Substream’s mailing list by accident, as Craig Walkner from progressive band Yeti Rain passed them my details so that I could be sent a copy of his solo album. Now, a few years on, I find myself playing an album that is electro-pop and deep electronica. Given that the last album I reviewed before this was death metal, it does show what a strange and eclectic taste I have in music, as this is really quite good. The person behind Flyinglow is Swedish Uppsala-based musician Joel Gabrielsson, who grew up in Singapore, studied at the School of Movement and Performance in Finland and in 2009 relocated to Ukraine for a couple of years. It was during this time that his interest in composing music started taking a more prominent role. He fronted the drone-pop band Toys in the Well performing in venues around Europe before moving back to Sweden, where he began to develop a new, solo recording project.
The album took a year to complete, as Joel wrote, recorded and produced the songs on his own, which allowed him to move in the direction he wanted. Originally, he intended this to be an acoustic album, but he soon began to apply sequencers and synthesizers, which moved him in a different direction. Many of the tracks use poly-rhythms, and the keyboards often swirl between the speakers, creating something that is electronic yet also warm. I was intrigued to realise that although this is not the type of music I normally listen to, and feel very much out of depth when writing about it, this was an album I really enjoyed playing. Just seven songs, and only thirty-two minutes long, it is far more commercial than the keyboard music I normally listen to, but found myself compelled to keep playing it and wondering what his next release will be like, as this is damn fine.
