Memoria

Memoria is Trentemøller’s sixth full-length studio album since his 2006 debut. While six albums over 16 years may not seem like the most prodigious of outputs, the Danish musician has absolutely taken listeners on some expansive journeys in that time. Ratcheting up the dynamics and textures with each new album, Trentemøller has continued to get bolder and more explorative as his career has evolved. Veering from straightforward electronica to darkwave and indie atmospheres, no two of his albums have sounded exactly alike, but they've all been uniquely dedicated to unboxing the potentialities of a certain combination of mood, texture, and instrumentation. Throughout his career there have been nods toward the undeniable influence that shoegaze had on his formative years as a Gen X indie musician, but none—not even the presence of Slowdive's Rachel Goswell on his previous album, the tense and dark Obverse—have been as explicit and thorough as the overall atmosphere here. Trentemøller's roots in electronic music and post-punk coalesce with soaring gothic melodrama and the gauzy ethereality of the second wave of shoegaze; Memoria is definitely not as dark and aggressive as Obverse, but is more inchoate, and even a bit romantic. Tracks like "Glow" and "Linger" have echoey guitar lines that sound as if Trentemøller has nicked a hard drive directly from Robin Guthrie's studio, while the vocals of longtime collaborator Lisbet Fritze evoke the over-echoed breathiness of classic shoegaze vocalists. When Memoria shifts from explicit shoegaziness—as on the electronic pulse of of "Darklands" and "A Summer's Empty Room" or the M83-meets-Slowdive electro-gaze of "No More Kissing in the Rain"—its downcast, atmospheric shimmer is never lost. The two approaches merge the most successfully on the nefarious swoon of "Swaying Pine Trees" (which sounds like Trentemøller's bid for an imaginary Twin Peaks soundtrack) and "Linger," which is all half-climax and sonic spaciousness. The track is a beautiful exercise in extended dynamics and slow-motion collapse, and a perfect close to an album that is both specific in its evocations yet hard to pin down. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz