Peter Johan Nijland is not ‘just’ another musician; he is a Musician with a capital M. He might even be part of projects you never thought of as a kind of silent partner, but let’s see. Solo, he is also known as Æter, Mr. Pure, nOh v°v and The Antler Man, and further as a member of Blitzkrieg Baby, Distel, Dynasti, Hadewych, Huttenkloas, Norn, O Saala Sakraal, Skymme, Syntax Pony, Trepaneringsritualen and the legendary Volksweerbaarheid. Yes, it’s THAT Peter. And how do musicians become good musicians like him? They experiment, and they learn. And on “Modal Collapse”, Peter shows us how he experiments, resulting in a 50-minute release with his explorations.
Early this month, he made a post on his FaceBook profile, and I hope he doesn’t mind me quoting from that post. He had the chance to use the granular synth created by Dutch firm Tasty Chips Electronics, a massive monster. Just point your search engine towards “GR-Mega Granular Workstation” if you’re interested in that kind of stuff. Peter aimed to explore what my creativity could look like if the balance of my early fascinations with sound and exposure to influences had shifted in various ways.’ Sounds interesting, right? ‘[The] process was to intuitively start each track with a sound from my library that had remained unused for reasons of not fitting within my current creative paradigms.’
The result of this is an album that’s not an album but that will sound like an album to those open to experiments. Despite the conceptual approach, the tracks definitely have a beautiful coherence. Here and there are small moments of imperfection with resonance, for example, but it doesn’t break the atmosphere. It only adds to the lo-fi atmosphere of the release being on cassette. Peter says about the release as a whole, ‘Normally I would keep this kind of escapades to myself, but in the spirit of recycling and the onset of spring, it felt like a proper thing to put them out in the sun for a change.’ And you know, he’s right. More artists should do things like that. Listen to “Used To Mean Something” or “Gnosis Conduit”. Imagine that no one would have a chance to listen to those tracks! That would be horrible!
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