Lights & Motion – Chronicle

For me, post-rock is a great thing to fall asleep to. I used to use  Ágætis byrjun by Sigur Rós to drone out my roommate’s snoring in college. Elfish is better than a boat horn created from small sinus cavities anyway.

I guess that’s why I find it surprising to hear that Light & Motion came out of a time in Christoffer Franzen‘s life where he couldn’t sleep. On his third release, Chronicle , the Swedish composer goes for “a big canvas sound” according to a release from his record company Deep Elm. Is it good? It’s fantastic, but all post-rock sounds the same to me after a while.

It is the soundtrack of teenage girls with hope in their hearts and advertising agent overlords who know they can make a buck off their candy coated dreams. That isn’t to say Cronicle isn’t good. It is very good. Franzen has been featured in movie soundtracks and in Google ad campaigns. Odds are that you heard him at some point in the past two years. He is the sound of a particular space and place in a post-modern design aesthetic.  Give “Reborn” a listen-it has waves of sound and high definition blasts of orchestras and guitars that would make Brian Wilson blush. It is overproduced post-rock.

But it is damn good overproduced post-rock.

This is a “play by play narrative or score of certain events of my life,” says Franzen in a Deep Elm release. Chronicle and it’s magnanimous  sound reflects the desire of the composer to engage his love of cinema. The soundscape on “Particle Storm” is wonderful. So is the opener “Glow” and “Antlers” a little later in the album. Northern Europeans definitely know how to pull at heart strings in their music. Post-rock is like their Jazz. Or something.