Like a fistful of sand tossed to the wind, Ingri Høyland’s new album Ode to Stone sometimes threatens to disappear entirely. There are seldom more than a few tones playing at any given moment; with the exception of her collaborator Ida Urd’s electric bass, the provenance of her sounds is often unclear. Are they synthesizers? Feedback? Aural illusions caught on tape? They flicker like candlelight, tremble like the last leaves left on a barren branch. For long stretches, nothing happens, except for the decay of two or three notes fading to silence. But Ode to Stone is not minimalist, exactly. That term—any “-ism,” in fact—feels too structural, too knowing, for music this prone to drifting.
This organic, aleatory quality marks a significant shift from Høyland’s last album, There's a Girl Inside My Brain Who Wants to Die, where the Norwegian-born, Copenhagen-based musician grappled with anguish and vulnerability in stark, shadowy electronic pop. Where that album was deeply personal—the first track was called “Ego, Bitch”—Ode to Stone decenters the human. Working in collaboration with Urd, fellow ambient musician Sofie Birch, and visual artist Lea Dulditte Hestelund, Høyland created the album in response to an open call for work themed around Denmark’s national parks. She chose to focus on Husby Klitplantage, a rolling dune landscape fringed by pine forests on the country’s west coast.
Peruse photos of the place while listening to the album, and Ode to Stone’s abstraction snaps into focus. Høyland’s soft, rounded tones mimic the broad sweep of the dunes, the patterns of wind combing across seagrass, the silver of the winter sun on a flat, gray sea. She has spoken of her interest in capturing the “cohesive force” of that coastal wilderness: the interplay of the elements, and the interdependencies that have evolved over eons. To offer a glimpse of deep time in a half hour of music is no easy task, but Ode to Stone does an admirable job, despite its humble, understated materials.
“Forced by its very weight” opens the record with held tones and the faintest shimmer of melody; its languid pace and refusal of anything like a payoff feel like an invitation to slow down and clear one’s thoughts. “Memory in hand” dissolves further into the air, a soft explosion of electronic birdsong. Such forms are too indistinct to follow closely; the mind wanders, not unpleasantly. But should you refocus your attention on the music, you might be surprised at how much variety there is. The effect is akin to the way that a seemingly drab patch of beach, under close examination, begins to reveal a microscopic infinity.
In “Stream of light,” Urd drizzles stark high-necked glissandi into the inky blackness; it’s melancholy, sullen, a little goth—like someone practicing early Cure basslines alone in their bedroom. In “What pressure, what magnetism,” undulating drones hint at Sunn O)))’s seismic doom. But then, with “Our very own sun,” the skies briefly clear: Høyland’s soft, bright multi-tracked vocal harmonies are reminiscent of Ana Roxanne, Low, or even Grouper. Contrasting the chilly drones that have come before, it offers a fleeting glimpse of dream pop, her voice as smooth as driftwood and luminous as beach glass.
The song lasts only two minutes; it’s followed by a penultimate track of sorrowful abstractions and, finally, five minutes of rolling surf and wind scraping against the grill of the mic. But its sweetness and relative warmth are a welcome addition to the album. They are an indicator of human scale against unfathomable vastness: a small, red “You are here” dot on a sun-bleached and wind-battered map whose coordinates might otherwise defy deciphering.
