YOU ME | VINYL RECORD (LP)

As reflected in Tebbe Schöningh's beautiful cover photograph of a seascape - an image which Kim Myhr says he imagined for the cover before any sound was recorded - the music on 'You I me' is suitably oceanic: a tidal flow of immersive sound saturated with the flotsam and jetsam of incidental detail. Structured over two 'sides' (the actual A and B sides of the vinyl release), which are themselves reflective of whatever further binary pairings you wish to apply to them, as in cold/warm, inside/outside, culture/nature, urban/rural (although the difference between the sides is never entirely clear-cut), composer/guitarist Myhr has created two continuously shifting and shimmering long-form pieces centred around the same repetitive rhythmic pulse. Partly built from the ground up by the over-laid guitars and electronic add-ons played by Myhr himself, this pulse is also the preserve of the album's three guests (the only other musicians involved), star drummers Tony Buck (The Necks), Ingar Zach (Huntsville, Dans les Arbres) and Hans Hulbækmo (Atomic, Moskus, Broen). The result is remarkably effective: music that you can get lost in, a dense accumulation of sonic information where the process of perception becomes as important as the object perceived. Once the pulse gets underway, the organic-seeming development of it's infinitesimally changing yet essentially static formal structure makes listening to 'You I me' as easy as breathing, while the often ecstatic, blissed-out soundscape carries a particularly strong psychedelic charge. Indeed, listening to 'You I me' could be a stoner's delight, like staring at the pattern in a carpet until it starts to take on a life of it's own.