For her second release on Northern Electronics, Vallmo (appellation of Melina Åkerman Kvie) ennobles her clemently frugal electronics stretching her pensive proficiency towards an actuation in defence of tonality. What Virgil is to Dante, the piano is to the listener. A fragmented leitmotif and a cicerone into the nimbus that is “Othem”. Dual in nature, the album comprises seamless transitions between divergent idioms, figuratively as well as literally. A false dichotomy conveying the opposing pairs tender and bold, distinct but evading and with a direction every so often forward as inward.

Each track is a crevice offering kaleidoscopic gleams into the poetic narrative extracted from the materiality of a slightly autotuned yet softly metallic voice. Not so different from standing in a bosket attending from a distance an invisible concert, performed by a remote ensemble. Far away, a flare is suggested inviting one down and below to a realm of distant and thunderous base. The eponymous “Othem” implies an archaic, fantasy-like vision of feudal nature. Perhaps, one can see it as a hymn to the tinctures of abstraction surrounding Vallmo. Phenomena that she collects, arranges, shapes and reveres as everyday essences; a ballad of the beauty of the mind and the deconstruction of pop. On verso, she increases her voicing with different means. Drums materialise from afar foreshadowing the patchily fizzling magnetic elements of harmony in alluring compositions. Seemingly, one does not get any closer than this to Vallmo’s singular, subjective and paramount sonority.

Through the expressive lines and shading of tone and timbre, Vallmo captures inner endeavours complete with triumphs and vulnerabilities. To the inner eye a scent of limestone and the sensation of sun protrudes amidst pure, brilliant intonation. The chiming resonance in the picture gallery of a lyrical ambiance lay bare the tension fields in the spatiality that is Vallmo’s pantheon of sound. An opus in equal parts melancholy, magic and mimesis.