It can come across a bit contrived when artists sneak off to some quiet place to record an album. But would For Emma, Forever Ago have happened if Bon Iver hadn’t snuck off to some shed in North Carolina? There’s inspiration to be found in freeing ourselves from the everyday grind and multi instrumentalist Coby Sey, soprano vocalist Olivia Salvadori and drummer Akihide “Moncha” Monna think this too.
The nature of sound and its relationship with time and its surroundings was at the core of Sey and Salvadori’s Exercises on Displacement shows in London in 2019. The two had worked with Akihide Monna from acid punk band Bo Ningen around that time, and in 2022 the three of them decided to team up and leave London to record their eponymous debut album as Gaister at Greenhouse Studios in Reykjavik.
Their Icelandic environment no doubt contributes to the folksy feel of the record. There is little to no repetition or melody for us to hold onto and the instrumentation is minimal with the three musicians fluctuating freely between singing, spoken word and ritualistic drumming. This primitive sound makes for a striking if somewhat challenging listening experience.
Their spartan palette consists of mostly just the voice, percussion and a tiny bit of synth but they shape these rudimentary elements into a surprising range of moods. It feels unhinged when Salvadori’s soprano erupts out of the abyss on ‘Assonanze’. It’s like the Sound of Music’s ‘Do-Re-Mi’ but to a tune from a folk horror movie rather than a heartwarming musical. When the trio pad out this unnerving amount of space with synths and gentle cymbal patters you get the soothing feel of ‘Solar’. Monna’s drumming occasionally injects a bit of urgency and purpose into proceedings: he rattles in the background of ‘Source’ with enough pep to almost get you dancing. For the most part, though, Gaister sketch an austere landscape that emboldens the vocals.
Their speaking and singing in Japanese, English and Italian emphasise our limits in understanding the world around us. When we don’t understand what’s being said we are forced to just feel the words. The dry and steady clip clop of Monna’s Japanese on ‘Shi’ comes across deadpan, deep and philosophical, like he’s telling a story round a fire, while the way Salvadori stretches the Italian words ‘Se / Dalla / Nasce’ (‘if’, ‘from’, ‘raises’, respectively) on ‘Conscious Concentration’ is wild and emotive as though she’s summoning a deity. And when the words do make sense to us, we still have to imagine. Sey’s English on ‘Geist’ is one long skeleton of pithy phrases and it’s up to us to flesh it out with our own thoughts. “Gigantic / Seen from afar / Minute,” he says, as though adjusting the zoom of a camera, but at what, we don’t know – a leaf, a mountain, the Milky Way? Gaister revel in the unknown. Instead of fighting for meaning they are just happy, as Sey puts it, to be “Immediate / Present”.
