Photo: Martin Croser

Swedish sound artist Tomas Nordmark will release his new album, Exit Ghosts, in May.

Nordmark, from Västervik, Sweden, takes his inspiration from the phase-shifting minimalism pioneered by New York’s avant-garde community of in the ’60s, and he’s set out to blend that with his pop-oriented upbringing. He’s since been pursuing an intellectually rigorous musical style that blends cathartic melodies with a deeply felt ideal of truth through art.

Exit Ghosts is a “spiritual sequel” to his debut album, Eternal Words, released in 2019. He began to work on it in March 2020 using a strictly limited technical palette, mirroring the process-based work introduced by minimalist composers.

Informed by the choral hymns and folk tunes of Nordic tradition, Nordmark began editing and cutting fragments of melodies layering and then sequencing them according to a strict process of creating new melodic textures through a process he calls “hyper-anachronism.” From there, he let the process work itself out, using the intuition of the notes themselves to guide the direction of his work.

We’re told also that the album is partly influenced by the history of film scores and the aesthetics carried by that tradition. It lands on New York label Valley of Search.

Tracklisting

01. Exit
02. Ghosts feat. Waterbaby
03. Dreaming
04. Spirit
05. Aftertime
06. Nights
07. Becoming
08. Outsides

Exit Ghosts LP is scheduled for May 14 release. Meanwhile, you can stream “Exit” in full below and pre-order here.