Led by singer/performer Per Lindmark, Voices and Organs are a Swedish group of indeterminate membership whose blurred creations are rooted deep in the inexact memories and perceptions of distant childhood. The 18 songs on the group's debut Orphanage were initially conceived as short stories, and each appears to have been assembled directly upon that slim border that separates the impressions of actual past events from those only imagined. And though Voices and Organs' dreamy sound is predominantly centered on electronic instruments and grainy, processed tape effects, the album frequently sounds akin to the hermetic psych-folk of Finnish artists like Islaja or Lau Nau, capable of instantly transporting the listener into its insular, alien landscape.
As its title implies, what lyrical action there is on this album centers on the stories of a young boy and girl in a fictitious orphanage. Yet throughout the album, the joint male/female vocals, though sung in English, are typically so buried beneath wisps of gauzy sound that their storylines are rendered virtually undetectable. Since the songs had their origins in prose, none are truly equipped with what could be easily identified as choruses, or in some cases discernable vocal melodies at all. Instead the vocalists' inscrutable croons and whispers move like sleepwalkers through the dimmed halls, their paths guided along by the music's ambiguous contours.
Constructed almost entirely without noticeable percussion, Orphanage seems intended to promote a certain immersive stupor. If you are able to fend off its narcotic effects, however, the album soon reveals itself to be packed close with absorbing detail, the songs carefully edited and sequenced to appear as one seamless episode. A scrap of piano on "Trees Are Bending" leads almost imperceptibly into "Staircase, Attic, Window", its delicate melody continued with strummed guitar, melodica, and gently cascading vocals. "Through the City" opens with a brassy fanfare that soon moves into supple dunes of analog synth, while "Sundays" has a warm, needle-on-vinyl intimacy that's quickly exchanged for the wobbly guitar distortions of "Boychild". And Lindmark and company make their most overtly folk-related gestures on the two editions of the acoustic bedroom hymn "Idle Words", their narrative distilled to a series of half-awakened, wordless hums.
With their Scandinavian background and their graceful, elliptical flow, Voices and Organs seem to demand comparison to Sigur Rós, but Orphanage reveals none of that group's patient, rigorous crescendos or attention to orchestral scale. By all appearances, Voices and Organs prefer to sculpt their individual chronicles on a more microscopic level, leaving their songs with an appearance as diffuse and ephemeral as a chance burst of geyser steam. All that remains to be seen is if the group intend to further build upon the fragile, ethereal structures of Orphanage, or if their music is by its very nature destined to quietly dissipate into the atmosphere like vapor, leaving behind only its collection of lightly dazed witnesses.
