Fordlandia＜Black Vinyl＞

ポスト・クラシカルのオリジネイターとして活躍したJOHANN JOHANNSSONの6作目『Fordlandia』が〈4AD〉から初の重量盤ヴァイナル仕様でリリース

2018年に48歳の若さでこの世を去ったアイスランドの現代音楽家でありポスト・クラシカルのオリジネイター、JOHANN JOHANNSSON。
彼が2008年にリリースした6作目のアルバム『Fordlandia』はストリングスとエレクトロミュージックを見事に融合させたポスト・クラシカル・シーンを代表する作品として知られており、当時は〈4AD〉よりCDのみでリリースされ、2013年に自身のレーベル〈NTOV〉より初めて数量限定でヴァイナルがリリースされた。
今回〈4AD〉からのヴァイナル(180g重量盤ブラック・ヴァイナル仕様)リリースは初で、The Breedersの『All Nerve』のアートワークも手掛けたアーティストChris Biggによるゲートフォールドスリーブで新たに生まれ変わる。
アルバム名は、米自動車会社フォードが1920年代にブラジルで建設した天然ゴムプランテーションのフォードランディアに由来しており、「神秘主義とロケット工学の衝突」がアルバムのテーマの一つとなっている。

The second installment in Johann Johannsson's trilogy of albums about technology and iconic American brand names, Fordlandia expands on IBM 1401, A User's Manual by chronicling, among other things, the failure of Henry Ford's Brazilian rubber plant with the power of a 50-piece string orchestra. IBM, which included recordings of its titular computer, could have been gimmicky or overly conceptual, but the results were remarkably moving and personal. While Fordlandia is slightly more straightforward musically, its concepts and emotional impact are much more involved and ambitious. Fittingly, ambition is one of the album's major themes, along with failure, mortality, immortality, and technology's potential for creation and destruction. Johannsson depicts these dualities with portraits of great heights and, mostly, deep losses. Ford's doomed project -- which he envisioned as a utopia but ended in disaster, with rioting workers and the development of synthetic rubber, ultimately costing him millions of dollars -- provides the thematic backbone for the album's major pieces. "Fordlandia"'s strings and subtle electric guitars are never less than majestic, but move gradually and naturally from hope to bittersweet doubt over the course of 13 minutes, keeping the intimacy that Johannsson's work has shown since Englaborn. That bittersweetness wells into sorrow on "Fordlandia -- Aerial View"; recorded in a Reykjavik church with no edits, its aching strings and low-rumbling percussion sound equally devastated and beautiful. Fordlandia also tells equally fascinating stories of creation and destruction that are less well known than Ford's: "The Rocket Builder (Lo Pan!)" takes its inspiration from self-taught chemist, rocket propulsion researcher, and occultist Jack Parsons, building from strings to precise electronics that overtake the track with a tense, slightly sinister beauty that deepens into dread thanks to doomy guitar chords. Its foil is "Melodia (Guidelines for a Space Propulsion Device Based on Heim's Quantum Theory)," inspired by German physicist Burkhard Heim, who, despite being blind, deaf, and having lost his hands in a World War II accident, devised a theory for space travel faster than the speed of light. Named after a research paper based on his work, the piece soars skyward on a looping pipe organ melody and streaming synths and strings, offering some hope among the rest of Fordlandia's gloom. "The Great God Pan is Dead" -- which alludes to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems about the demigod who embodied creation and destruction for her -- crystallizes these dualities, as well as the album's profound sense of loss, with choral vocals and rain. Fordlandia's shorter pieces are nearly as heady and substantial as its major tracks: "Chimaerica"'s title blends the monster of Greek mythology with America, and its mournful pipe organ melody underscores the feeling that this album is a funeral service for the American dream. Variations on the "Melodia" theme tie the larger pieces together, appearing first as a clarinet-driven piece that evokes Ford's '20s heyday, then augmented with deep guitars inspired by Sunn 0)))'s work, and finally as a ghostly wash of strings and clarinets. Another 13-minute elegy, "How We Left Fordlandia," closes the album by uniting its concepts and musical themes in a somber but satisfying farewell. While knowing the inspiration behind the album reveals its depth, its music is more than powerful enough to be appreciated without the historical context that informs it. Beautiful, thoughtful, and sad on a grand scale, Fordlandia is nearly as ambitious as the stories it tells, but unlike its source material, it's another success for Johannsson. ~ Heather Phares

ムームやシガー・ロスとも縁の深いアイスランドの人気レーベル＝キッチン・モーターズの創設者であり、自身もクリエイターとして活躍するヨハン・ヨハンソンの新作。重厚で物悲しいオーケストレーションにアンビエントな音響処理を施すことで、〈破綻した悲運のユートピア〉なる難解なテーマを見事に音像化している。豊かな表現力と知性で創造された、まるで演劇でも観ているかのようなエレクトロニカ作品。これは泣けます。
bounce (C)富田 純司