The Swedish poet and aphorist Vilhelm Ekelund spent some of his most ascetic and prolific years in Berlin in the early decades of the 19th century, albeit in poverty and near starvation. Berlin has been a cultural - and sub-cultural - focal point since long, and it stays that way, perhaps now even more than before. It's a habitat for much of the most interesting contemporary art of all kinds. Perhaps I may remind you of artists as different as the Stockhausen pianist Frank Gutschmidt , just lately reaching a legendary position, and Hanna Hartman , the Swedish sound poet who reached Berlin via the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation 's Program 1, and later a Copenhagen stay. Now, on this CD, we hear another one of those artists that have made Berlin their creative basis; Andreas Bertilsson . He is a sound artist of a younger generation, i.e., compared to old farts like Lars-Gunnar Bodin , Sten Hanson and Folke Rabe , to name a few choice ones from the Swedish sound scene, all three representing their own section of that scene; Bodin the electronic and text-sound section, Sten Hanson the more barnstorming text-sound section and Folke Rabe the more strict, traditional process of composing. There are a number of new, interesting sound artists emerging, but it takes something very good to catch the ear of us older listeners, who have become wasted by the brilliance of - from the international sound art community - personalities and legends like Francois Bayle , Bernard Parmegiani or Jean Schwarz . One of these fresh artists is, without a doubt, the Swedish sound monger Andreas Bertilsson , who, for unknown reasons, has chose the somewhat ridiculing artist name Son of Clay . I think his personal name sounds much better! There are some characteristics that immediately strike me as I spin the first track; Bring Me Water or Bread ; - the touch of poetry and the delicacy of handicraft. The sounds approach in soap-bubble bubbling tendernesses, as if rising out of the open hand of the Creator in a generous gesture of archetype benevolence. There is no immediate danger; you are protected by the friendly unfolding of sonic events, in a kind of magical fairytale promise of no harm. As for the poetic nuance, Bertilsson merges with the true source of electroacoustic poetry; the French connection. Nowhere has electroacoustics - acousmatique - been more poetic than in France , rising out of studios like the GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales), GMVL (Groupe Musique Vivantes de Lyon), Celia Studio ( Jean Schwarz 's studio) and Luc Ferrari 's studio La Muse en Circuit - to identify just a few of the main French originators of sound art poetry. You're inside the atmosphere of a secluded Southern France garden; distant church bells tolling while swifts speed around corners of white-washed houses in high-pitch whistles; a kind of absentminded concentration; a summer day hypnosis. A striking ingredient in Bring Me Water Or Bread is a recurring, downward whine, like the trajectory of a meteorite caught in the atmosphere, lighting up as it is pulled down. The trickle of small sounds in flocks, traveling backwards, also set the pace of an Alice In Wonderland scenery. Very beautiful. This is mystery and erotism in fluent timbres, better displayed than ever before. The Color Scheme is a different matter, as it appears within a soundscape that suggest maples and lindens and jackdaws; a city park - a soundscape that rose through the last bars of the former piece, defining the beginning of the second one; The Color Scheme . The fairytale fragrance stays, even though the pace is slower here, but the motion of the tonal paint brush describe another state of mind; one of consciousness hovering over the gravel paths of the park, away from the surrounding streets; a moment of soap bubble meditation, the viewer inside a bubble, the world outside projected on the curving surface around the viewer in distorted, gooed images, the reflections of his own state of mind on the inside of the same thin membrane of transparency. The dark and brown hues of the tones, appearing to originate in a synthesizer of sorts, are masterly managed by Andreas Bertilsson, who achieves a sense of inwardness and defined theory of place, that of city park; a musical theory of the characteristics of city park, and consciousness hovering, almost lurking - engaging me, the listener, in an active act of painting with associations, remembrances and emotional residue. Forest On Paper is a very short event, curving, flying fragments of audio in jackdaw land, turning, twisting, spiraling flakes of caramel sounds; perhaps a magnification of microscopic events on the crumpled-up leaves of yesteryear, making me think of a song by Olle Adophson : Okända djur (Unknown Animals). He sings about creatures that you can't see but exist anyhow, even though, in Andreas Bertilsson 's piece it's the other way around; creatures that don't exist but that you see anyway. Vision Thing commences in dark and pearly progressions, embellished in shining, glistening reflections from moving surfaces, water over pebbles in a Lapland jokk, bell-like figures, scribbled messages over the shores, immediately erased by the swell, written again, and erased. A summer rain pours down through the timbres, in a fictitious French acousmatique session, the lightest of thoughts playing by themselves in a corner of a garden while Self is lost in dreams and sensual desires, the water dripping from the leaves, minuscule insects hiding by tree roots, the plasticity of sound fondling all thought forms in universal consolation. Max Kristofer introduces a more severe atmosphere; quirky, creaky noises inside the scape of bells and sensual synthesizer timbres; a flurry of musique concréte cow bells and squeaking fenders inside - or in front of - the chamber ensemble expression of the synthesizer - and I realize that Andreas Bertilsson 's oeuvre is one of thoughtfulness and delicacy, no matter what he does, because, like Berlin sound artist Hanna Hartman , he never overstates anything, but always displays his musical ideas in beautiful, fastidious transparency, adding just exactly what is needed, but not more - like Japanese calligraphy on rice paper. and it dawns on me that Bertilsson is not only French at heart - but also. Japanese! The Rook is another short expression, tender, somehow medieval and sacral - a glimpse of the spiritual devotion of times passed, inside the cooling grasp of thick church walls in Catholic times. I Can't Make It Alone moves in guitar picking twirls and scribbled tonal figures, screwing themselves ahead like tunnel boring equipment or like larvae through the bark of lindens, spiraling forth like slow-motion fireworks, witch pipes pitched down and bowed in airy trajectories, as smaller, quicker clicks and twangs twirl on, prickly audio falling like rice on tinfoil - but never without the formal security of rolling, turning, stumbling familiar sounds out of the synthesizer - which, however, at times may sound like a 1966 Terry Riley Untitled Organ harmonium! First Snowflakes, Then Winter Fall tingles to a start, a precarious, starry-sky start, the jingling of the stars piercing the living as the rustling of old thoughts freeze to icy still-life ballets on the outskirts of the light of mind, electric sparks passing through the cerebral cortex like stray meteorites through the upper atmosphere; a though here, a though there. and the bottomless void of the clarity of Rigpa . This is wondrous, close-up, skin to skin acousmatique, Andreas Bertilsson managing the array of sounds at hand like was he an octopus with many arms, shifting positions of levers and sticks, pushing buttons, connecting and disconnecting circuits - as the brilliance of jingling jangling sounds are danced across the backdrop of an emerging drone, timbre-rich, in a shimmering spectrum of overtones. The last piece is So Much Love I Can Take ; a title which in itself is beautiful, for anyone who recently might have had such a notion. and the piece opens in the resounding reflections of some upper-layer consciousness beyond the present circumstances, up there in Cosmic Love ( Ralph Lundsten !) timbres; a place where the shamans travel to the Beyond and back; the same level of existence in which lovers travel in transcendent ecstasy, at one with the woman, the man, at one with life and death, with Rigpa ; that starry sky dominion beyond the here and the now, which really is the core of the here and the now. Magnificent audio, Andreas Bertilsson !