øjeRum - Syv Segl [OF018]

I first heard Syv Segl on a slow train from Wolverhampton in the Midlands to Aberystwyth, Wales. It was pitch black outside and, as is often the case, migraine-bright inside the carriage. It was a journey of perception without vision. Around that time I was listening repetitively to Mike Ratledge's score for Laura Mulvey's Riddles of the Sphinx (1977). In Syv Segl I found a companion piece to that soundtrack, and this mundane commute became a tranquil blur; against the wintering environs a seasonal score of its own appeared out of wilting hedges. 

Syv Segl – both the Danish phrase for the Book of Revelation's seven seals and an idiom for keeping a secret: 'my lips are sealed with seven seals' – exists in stillness, with subtle variations in theme delicately dispersing and recirculating throughout the album's path. It's a secular record but embodies ecclesiastical tones in both its patience and entrancing ability to sound neither contemporary nor superannuated; a creeping aura from the stone walls of a deconsecrated cathedral. For me, Syv Segl aurally renders the Dark Age ruins of St. Blane's Chapel on the Isle of Bute, where beyond its enclosure we depart from the sacred world. 

All seven compositions were recorded at øjeRum's home in Copenhagen in the autumn of 2018. As with all of øjeRum's intimately formed tapes, Syv Segl features his signature collage work, as interpreted by three drums of the Risograph.   

I would like to extend special thanks to Good Press in Glasgow for hand printing the j-card. Syv Segl comes as a superferric C49 inside a deep blue cassette cartridge. Limited to 75 copies.

Track List: