Taken By Trees- East Of Eden
8/10

Braving some of most unruly man-made conditions on earth, Victoria Bergsman chose to challenge the prejudicial views of Pakistani culture by travelling to the country to record her second full-length album East Of Eden. Her admiration for the likes of Abida Parveen and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan drew her to the region, and to explore the cultural diversity of Pakistan’s second largest city Lahore, situated in the Punjab province on the country’s Eastern border. Upon her arrival in Lahore, Bergsman discovered a thriving music community, stumbling across a group of local Sufi musicians who regularly gathered to play music at the hotel she was staying at. The notes on the recording process describe a long passage of discrimination and sexual desire, but most of them are too detailed to go into here. However once many of the social barriers were overcome, Bergsman was able to take control of the recording process, leading the ensemble of Sufi musicians through her musical arrangements to create an album contextualising Middle Eastern music with her softly spoken Swedish folk. Weaving an open cast spell through a mine of pan flutes, native string instruments, percussion and bells, East Of Eden is a unique collaboration between two colliding worlds. Opening track ‘To Loose Someone’ sets the scene, with a simple Middle Eastern rhythm dubbed to Bergsman’s idyllic voice. ‘Anna’ then enters via a cultural chant before easing into a mellifluous lullaby with backing vocals from Noah Lennox (Animal Collective, Panda Bear). Later in the album (track 7) Bergsman covers Animal Collective’s ‘My Girls’, altering the title to ‘My Boys’ and adding her own dark, psychedelic, Middle Eastern twist. ‘Watch The Waves’ is an obvious single, taking a more Western approach classically driven by a simple guitar and vocal melody. It’s the most likely song to attract a wider pop audience and is a good lead in track for people who may be unfamiliar with Bergsman’s previous work. Final track ‘Bekannelse’ sums up the emotional instability and the many challenges overcome by Bergsman throughout the recording process. It is an improvised musical poem originally written by the 1946 Nobel Prize-winning Swiss laureate Hermann Hesse, set to an electronic drone complete with chimes and pan flutes. Encasing many intricate details, East Of Eden is a fine example of two very different cultures coming together to make an album that many in today’s society thought was impossible. It has been described by some as the first collaboration by such culturally eclectic artists in the history of popular music; that’s a rather bold statement, but the truth is that this album is unlike any other.
Nick

Posted by Nick Fulton under Album, Reviews
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