Icicles
CD Xenophone 2010
TWICE A MAN Icicles
Release 30th of April 2010
"The secret ministry of frost,
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon."
(from Frost at Midnight, by S.T.C. Coleridge 1798)
Sweden is cold and dark during winters. This year the snow stayed for many months. Twice a mans album Icicles, reflecting on the enviroment that surround, but also a theme that correspond to a frosty lonelyness of the heart. It´s an album of wonderings, worries, longing, confusion, heartbreak... an autobiographical journey into the mysterious landscape called Love, with all it´s expectations of fulfilling our lives and our romantic dreams. It´s not always so; the happy glimpses we sometimes feel turn often into melancholy, even despair. Hope and faith falter. At those times
it´s a comfort to look upon the quiet moon and try to make beauty through music, pictures, words... with hope to get closer to the ever returning light.
Icicles may sound as a gloomy concept, but the music is not as ambient as the two songalbums from the last decade or as experimental as their 90´s instrumental work. Icicles has more in common with Twice a mans 80´s productions. They are looking back to their roots in dark wave electronic pop, not without a smile and a blink to the younger men in their suits :) How much has really happened since those days thirty years ago? At least, Love stays the same.
Icicles was made during 2008-10. It includes a remake of the never released song Where are you now, made in -91. All songs are written by Twice a man, with the exception of the songs Wandering, where the text is by the american artist Mach Feedback and Tranquil moonlit lake (for Virginia Woolf), a musical collaboration with the japanese artist Linda Bjalla. Icicles is made in collaboration with Daniel Kaufeldt, who co-produced, mixed and mastered.
"Love is a mixture of truth and illusion. The truth consists in the possibility that human beings can understand each other and live together, The illusion lies in the tendency of the mind, under the influence of passion, or insufficiency, to see other human beings in fictitious light. Human beings need each other, that is certain. There must be communication, and communication on the highest level. Can we share our visions of reality or are they available only to the solitary mind?"
(from Virginia Woolf, a commentary by B. Blackstone 1949)