Bergur Anderson

Well, Bergur’s done it again.

This album you’re (be)holding, Bergur Anderson’s second solo release, Around the Songster’s Commune, is really-really good.

Fresh. Simple. Magic.

Fresh, like it sounds live — made in this moment. Like it’s going on now. And I’m — you’re — the listener — we’re there, witnessing it unfold.

Simultaneously (and uncontradictorily), it also feels like some sort of documentation. Like broadcasts or field recordings come back from some wonderous fictive place.

Night Time Transmissions, Bergur’s first solo album, was also, beautifully, an unfolding whole world — rich and complex. But Around the Songster’s Commune has a less-conscious-poetic-logic; less parameters in general, even. Somehow softer.

Here, Bergur seems to be exploring the looseness of world-making. Or, maybe better said, exploring how loose he can get with world-making and the realization of sonic realities. Exploring how unconscious, how trusting of himself, as an artist/composer/sound-maker/human, he can be.

Around the Songster’s Commune was made quite quickly and purposefully without a lot of fuss — made to preserve the spirit of its making — at Diana Duta’s generous Jambes studio in Brussels. It’s a collection of meditations: compositional fragments, whimsy ditties, field recordings and (live/d) experiments with troubadour song-making methodologies. It’s a sonic drift — sonically drifts.

Simple as in, unpretentious, yes — but also as in, deceptively simple. Bergur has a way of making things seem simple — and that’s because he’s so adept. He’s a very gifted student of melody and arrangements will arrange themselves like butterflies around him in the sun; like sweet strawberries at his feet.

pluck, pluck, pluck . . .