Matthew Collings & Dag Rosenqvist – Wonderland

On another collaboration for hibernate recordings (it’s actually a third installment in the label’s Collaboration series), Matthew Collings meets Dag Rosenqvist (the very same Dag of the Jasper TX, From The Mouth Of The Sun and De La Mancha projects), for a twenty minute EP titled Wonderland. After a brief acoustic guitar introduction, the EP dives into an abyss of noise driven distortion and increasingly tense darkness. Yes, this is precisely the type of thick blackout that I love to spread lightly on my morning toast. “Precipice” is not apologetic. Inspired by a series of photographs of an abandoned amusement park in China (which, incidentally, Zoetica Ebb documented in her recently Kickstarter-funded project, The Secret Guide To Alternative Beijing), the duo explores the abandoned beauty of an industrial project, which once was supposed to bring smiles, and is now a skeletal ghost town of dreams. The music on Wonderland echoes this sorrow, as is literally evident in the last track, “Music For Dying Amps”. As usual with collaborations, the two amazing musicians bring their best skills to the table, creating a mixture of sounds they would not be able to muster alone. Stay tuned for my upcoming reviews of Matthew Collings’ Splintered Instruments (Fluid Audio) and Jasper TX An Index Of Failure (Handmade Birds).