Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, "Lost In Reflections" CD

"Lost in Reflections" is the fourth main album from Swedish artist Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words (Thomas Ekelund), packaged as a limited edition 7-inch/LP combination. Two years in the making, its creation spans a period in the artist's life marked by pivotal struggle, a time in which a debilitating psychiatric diagnosis must have both explained everything and shattered the world. "Lost in Reflections" is a mirror of that realm, a lens through which the listener can discover being set adrift in a sea of introspection, otherness and isolation. Ekelund here reveals the mechanisms underlying his work, in so doing giving a sure glimpse of the very humanity present in that terrifying vessel he inhabits: himself. From the first resonant note, repeating in sinister sincerity, "Lost in Reflections" uncoils with the utmost patience and care. "This Room Seems Empty Without You" continues from that note's deep recurrence, blossoming into spatiality with a rhythmic, three-part beat, joyless guitar plucking and anesthetic background chatter. On the 7-inch's reverse, "Lost & Losing" then deconstructs the peaceful enclosure from without, interior succumbing to exterior pressures of a vast, windblown expanse, fed by guitar drones and discomfiting, surging noise. "On Empty Streets, In Crowded Rooms" reminds of factory innards, chemical swamp gurgling, as machine whirring embattles forlorn guitar notes. "What Stays & What Fades Away" lends a subterranean atmosphere with directionless rumbling and unseen mewling creatures. Later, an insistent strumming seems just out of reach, as if behind opaque glass. The final nineteen-minute epic, "Himmelschreibende Herzen", begins with rippling drone swells, among which soft bass hits rise, and finally, orchestral notes gape and breathe. It is a somber, protracted march, yet ends with these notes hanging poignantly in the air. Whether this symbolizes daybreak, escape, absolution, or something else, it is doubtless hopeful. Unlike most drone acts utilizing guitar to construct sounds, Ekelund's is furnished with an undeniable tangibility, present as a distinct role in his soundscapes. Guitar provides melody where there otherwise would be none, emotive prickling in an environment of shifting black and white. It is the key to communicating a disorder's solitude, the lifeline stretching between parallel worlds. "Lost in Reflections" is not all void and darkness, shrouded apparitions and pervasive melancholy. Full of warmer tones, richer hues and softer timbres, we can accept that ensconced somewhere among the meticulous layering is a mind at odds with its environs, and by no choice of its own. - Dutton Hauhart, Connexion Bizarre

The cover art of Lost in Reflections depicts a sort of bizarre, surrealistic roundtable of clones in business suits, sitting with their arms folded and staring at each other as if they had all just swindled one another in the most heinous way possible. The rest is black. It's truly a strange scene, one undoubtedly meant to be a reflection of the album's vaguely spectral title. Thomas Ekelund (the man behind Dead Letters...) writes of the album that it is, to a large extent, an outgrowth of his diagnosis and subsequent battle with borderline personality disorder, and the attendant feelings of alienation, isolation, and the perturbation of the sense of self. He describes his personal degeneration as having gotten to the point where his image of himself was of "An empty shell containing oozing, black bile and nothing else." For all this marked doom and gloom, it's interesting that the most salient feature of the album is its approachability. A listener going into this album would be right to expect a plunging, pit-of-despair excursion through black fields draped with mist, the moaning intestines of glacial caverns and abandoned, decaying toy factories, and at points, we do get those sorts of typical dark ambient tropes. However, much more often we are submerged in a more subtle, profound, and strangely comforting seclusion. Set adrift on a sturdy but pliable raft of electronic snaps, crackles, and pops, we are borne gently to and fro by layered currents of iridescent guitar melodies and rolling swells of delicate fuzz. There is no doubt a strain of loneliness and pain suffered in solitude that runs through each of these songs, but it's the kind of neurosis that you can bring home to mom. As hard as this album tries to be tortured and inaccessible, it can't shake the fact that it's actually a very beautiful and generally pleasant experience. This is not to say that we've got an I'm From Barcelona album on our hands here. There are a couple tracks ("Lost and Losing," "In Crowded Rooms, On Empty Streets") that at least break ground on that pit of despair, alerting us to the darker side to Ekelund's project; but even these moments end up resolving themselves into graceful phantasms of melodies. I suppose that these subtle swayings of emotion are just another manifestation of the album's theme, but as illustrations of an ailment that Ekelund says "inevitably drapes every aspect of life in shadows that range from shades of gray to coal black," I can't help but feel that some of that terror and despair has not been fully transcribed. If this album is meant to be a declaration and relation of feelings of anguish, existential anxiety, and sequestration, I must say that it has failed. However, there is a type of invitation here, a form of calling into loneliness. We are not asked to empathize with this album, and we are not dragged screaming by its tendrils into the heart of darkness. Instead we are nudged, led quietly by our hands to a place where someone has found something of value, and then we are left there. A child's fortress inside a giant rotting stump deep in the forest, a dock with no boat or house on the shore of a lake long since turned to swamp — we are left alone, sure, but we are also left with the hope of coming to terms with that fact and of finding something worth being alone for." - Gabriel Keehn, Tiny Mix Tapes

Often one can ignore the background details for a given recording without handicapping the listening experience too greatly. There's no question, however, that one's appreciation of Lost in Reflections by Thomas Ekelund, the man behind Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, is enhanced by an awareness of the extremely challenging hand the Gothenburg-based composer has been dealt. Almost two years ago, he was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, a disease that permeates one's entire being and coats every moment in darkness. By his own admission, Ekelund's been reduced to a mirror-shunning spectre who can't bear to look into the eyes of others. Now fully aware of his condition and attempting to cope with it, he admits that he not only can't listen to Lost in Reflections objectively but has "a hard time listening to it at all." The severity of the affliction can't help but have affected the character of the album (more precisely the first two songs are paired on a 7-inch while the other four are on LP), and the material is as relentless as one would expect. Though the album apparently was recorded prior to the formal diagnosis (specifically, Lost in Reflections was recorded between December 2005 and March 2006), its gloom-laden spirit is clearly audible; consider as evidence the multi-layered dronescape "Lost & Losing" where electric guitars scream amidst the merciless howl of sweeping winds and lurching noise swells. Much of the fifty-minute recording sounds as if it was recorded outdoors by the seashore during a stormy night; hear, for example, the faint traces of string scrapes and guitar strums that struggle to penetrate the vaporous haze consuming "What Stays And What Fades Away." Surprisingly, the release isn't wholly downcast: "What I Wouldn't Give To Feel Alive" exudes a placid and peaceful spirit that's not bereft of hope, and pealing guitars and chirping electronic squeals bob to the surface of "Crowded Rooms, In Empty Streets" too. Nevertheless, a zenith of sorts is clearly reached in the closing piece, "Himmelschreibenden Herzen," when it unspools for a psychotropic nineteen minutes in a manner that suggests some inward plunge into madness. If one ever wondered what form a sonic portrait of Hades might assume, one need look no further than this grinding colossus. But be patient: while the deranged wail of a thousand tormented souls holds the first half hostage, epic melodies played by what sounds like strings, mellotron, and bells gradually rise to the fore during the second half. "Himmelschreibenden Herzen" hardly provides an easy exeunt to the album but it's definitely an incredible one. - Ron Schepper, Textura

Lost in Reflections takes, as its physical manifestation, the form of an LP with a seven-inch which is intended to be heard in the correct sequence as a single musical statement. Plangent studio-based guitar and effects recordings, in multiple overdubs, produce some of the most intensive and incredible slow drone sounds you've ever heard. Read the insert for a startling confessional text from its creator, Thomas Ekelund, but no matter what he tells you about his psychological condition nothing will prepare you for the ever-changing slew of emotional experiences that this work dares to unleash — veering from the ecstatic to the suicidally miserable, with a range of new and unknown emotions in between. Ekelund's painful personality dilemma is also expressed via the stark monochrome cover image, itself a pastiche of a well-known surrealist image. The sensitive listener had best be prepared for a record of relentless passion and power, yet its music is unspooled in a deliberative and contemplative manner. Chillingly beautiful! No wonder it took four record labels to release it. - Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector