Ecovillage: "Amadeu I"

Ever been to a disappointing party and suddenly felt the urge to flash back to an old camping trip? Ecovillage have, and they’re apparently sick of partying themselves after their light-infested pop/shoegaze debut. Temporarily signed to French digital singles label Beko, the Swedish duo are sober and reflective, like they’ve become Parisian almost by osmosis, and now appreciate the finer things in life, like bicycling, or a showing of Jules et Jim. This could be because half of them, Peter Wikström, recently channeled his excitement into solo project RadioSeed and now seems content to just mooch in the rain, which is how “Amadeu I” first appears. Arriving in a smear of wind and sea noises, you’d never guess this was from the creators of Phoenix Asteroid (2009), the record Jonas Munk described as “flourishing.” This feels more like Forest Swords being stranded in the rain with no sandwiches.

However, replace “colourful shoegaze” with a solitary cello, and some modulated water and synth effects, and you’ve got a track that becomes very interesting in its own right. Three minutes into “Amadeu I” and the strings have detected a rhythm, the woodland they’re playing in starting to turn tenser. It’s an atmosphere fellow Scandinavian Valgeir Sigurðsson would approve of: he’s the man who put the “eek” in Björk, and the man to spot an eleven-minute runtime must indicate some kind of momentum. Still, it takes a whole seven minutes before Wikström and Holmström finally turn down the rain, building very gradually to their familiar palette. The lights/vocals/shoegaze resurface, and this time Peter Wikström’s inhaled so much helium that he doesn’t need beats to propel him. Like swallowing hallucinogenics and then ducking behind a windbreak, “Amadeu I” stays fragile, and despite the decision to shift back to the rain for the long, torturous fadeout, Ecovillage’s experiment is a good one. It comes packed with the same message Stanley Kubrick made when he shot the 147-minute Shining: appreciate action, fans of atmosphere, because too often in life it’s done cheaply.