As Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, Gothenburg based composer and sound artist Thomas Ekelund has delved into a time-consuming investigation of the complex, multi-faceted world of solitude and introspective darkness. His pallet is strictly greyscale, but the tones he uses are deeper, more honest and more heartfelt than anything else out there.
»Lost in Reflections« is Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words’ fourth main album and his definite masterpiece so far. Here, hurt is transformed into absolute beauty. And here, dampened drones make pop art.
This, in the words of Thomas Ekelund himself, is how the album came about:
"Eighteen months ago I was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, a both vile and many-faced disease that inevitably drapes every aspect of life in shadows that range from shades of grey to coal black. It causes a polarity of mind, everything is either or, never in between. It makes you feel isolated and alone even in the most crowded rooms. Slowly this imagined isolation becomes a real isolation. You do not allow anyone inside the carefully constructed walls, built stone by stone by a mind so completely preoccupied with guilt and shame that you in fact become unhuman (sic). An empty shell containing oozing, black bile and nothing else. You become the disease.
I never look into mirrors unless it's absolutely necessary. Because I don't see the reflection of man, I see a specter, a phantasm, a distorted human-like figure to which I can't relate. I never look into the eyes of anyone I talk to because I am terrified that they will see the same apparition. I try to achieve invisibility, but in lack of that I hide my true appearance behind meticulously molded masks.
Eighteen months ago, »Lost in Reflections« was already half a year old. Still it deals with the above mentioned disease and some of the aspects of it. Its strange how the mind can be so aware and unaware at the same time.
Now it's two years later. And though I in some ways have a better grasp of my ailment I am nowhere near being rid of it. Most of the time I feel suspended, as if I was waiting for some great revelation of thruth, a stroke of magic that will transform me into someone like you. The person you see in the mirror. A human.
It has taken me two years to come to terms with this album. It's in many ways my most accessible work to date, but in other ways my most difficult and demanding. I can't listen to it objectively. In fact I have a hard time listening to it at all."
Tracklist: A. This Room Seems Empty Without You, B. Lost & Losing, C1. What I Wouldn’t Give To Feel Alive, C2. Crowded Rooms, In Empty Streets, C3. What Stays And What Fades Away, D. Himmelschreibenden Herzen
Split release with iDEAL, When Skies Are Grey and Fang Bomb.
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