An archipelago at the entrance to the Gulf of Bothnia in the Baltic Sea, nestled between Finland and Sweden, the Åland Islands is a curious place on the map. An autonomous and demilitarized region of Finland (last year they marked the 100th year of their autonomous status), the people speak predominantly Swedish. Consisting of almost 300 habitable islands and some 6,200 skerries and desolate rocks, the vast majority of the population live on the largest island, Fasta Åland, which itself has only four highways on it (the only four in all of Åland).
Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer first visited the Åland Islands back in 2017, going to help friends build a hotel in Kumlinge, a municipality to the east of Fasta Åland with a population of around 313. While the intention was that the hotel might serve as a location to host artist residencies and workshops, the atmosphere of the islands themselves started the work well before any such event could happen. As they took in this new terrain, enraptured by the tranquil and strange quality of a place where the sun doesn’t set in the summer and hardly rises in the winter, inspiration was brewing. Chiu and Honer already started gathering voice snippets, field recordings, and improvisations on various instruments. Thanks to a grant from the Department of Culture, the duo returned to the islands in 2019 to perform a concert at the Kumlinge Kyrka; they used this concert as the base on which they created their album Recordings From the Åland Islands.
Coming from the Los Angeles scene, Chiu is a professor at Otis College of Art and Design by day, but also a musical collaborator and visual artist, while Honer is the sought after session player who has worked with Fleet Foxes, Angel Olsen, Adrian Younge, and Beyoncé. Recordings From the Åland Islands seems to present a musical affinity that has been honed over decades, as the album seamlessly melds the two artists’ worlds into one sound that is hazily beautiful, curiously beguiling, and transportingly languid. Listening to the album feels like a guided tour through the routes on the island that are off the beaten path; it captures that starry wide-eyed wonder that seeing an impressive new landscape brings.
The duo have a way of cultivating a real sense of place that, even though it might be unfamiliar to most, feels relatable. The bleary synth on opening track “In Åland Air” feels like glimpsing a distant landscape with a hand cupping your eye so as to block out the sun, while “By Foot By Sea”, with its buoyant, transforming arpeggios, feels like bobbing along the connecting ocean paths at a faineant pace. The chattering wind chimes and late summer sun synth chords on “On the Other Sea” feel like half-remembered recollections of a summer holiday. Honer’s gorgeous sweeping viola sounds like snippets of melodies of songs that are nestled in the back of your mind, but you can’t remember the name of; a childhood song perhaps, or the tune your mother hummed to herself in the garden.
Like the field recordings of Haiku Salut before all the electronics are added on, and maybe a smidgen of múm from the focus on texture, Chiu and Honer might have a few stop points of reference, but largely they create their own world. The almost folksy viola on “Snåcko” recalls Andrew Bird’s Echolocations work for instance, but the warmth feels like the duo’s own. You might even find a faint note of Tim Hecker on “Kumlinge Kyrka” and “Anna’s Organ”, but the sense of personal touch is what comes through most; on the latter of those two tracks the way the way the organ notes tremble and vibrate feels strangely unnatural but ultimately transfixing. On “Stureby House Piano” a similar event happens: ripples of piano notes swirl down an aural sinkhole as the sound turns organic to synthetic with no way of discerning when that exact moment happens.
The only moment the album falters is the penultimate track “Archipelago.” Mining a darker hue of bristling night time air with long stretches of viola notes over seven minutes, the track is still engrossing, but feels like it has the least to say. When the final track “Under the Midnight Sun” comes by though, it matters little. Glistening like constellations, it also has that evaporating quality, going from rubbery synths all the way back to birdsong. It returns the album back to nature, to the sounds of the islands which are peppered throughout the album’s runtime.
At its most transfixing, Recordings From the Åland Islands sounds like music that might naturally arise from the landscape itself. Tranquil, bleary, and languid; ambient and gorgeous, but full of detail that makes the experience feel personal to Chiu and Honer. You feel like you’re travelling the islands with them; climbing rocky terrain; breathing in the sea air on the ferries between islands; tinkering with the resonance of various found objects; brushing hands against wind chimes hanging in windows; and basking in the light of the sun that won’t set. We’re taken to this curious place on the map, and Chiu and Honer – still fascinated by the surrounding landscapes and wanting to capture every detail they can – turn out to be ideal tour guides for the journey.
