Fifth chapter of Sven Wunder's exotic sonic journey, the most ambitious and perhaps the most imprudent of the Swedish musician. Joel Danell (real name of the artist, finally out in the open after a long period of mystery and anonymity) takes inspiration from Jerry Goldsmith's music for “Chinatown”, from Wojciech Kilar's soundtrack for the film “Dracula” by Francis Ford Coppola and from the works of Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni and Stelvio Cipriani, for an elaborate album that enters the world of fusion and library music with the usual elegance and a musically richer palette bordering on easy listening.
The Swedish author took his first steps creating music for television programs and films, he grew up listening to jazz (his father is a well-known drummer in the scene), and although his first approach was with the piano, he broadened his skills by developing an aptitude for the compositional structure typical of orchestral music.
“Daybreak” is his most delicate album, almost similar to the art of painting. Soundscapes are less volatile and unpredictable than jazz made in Japanspaghetti western and Anatolian funk which were the basis of the previous chapters, but the magic is unchanged. The first two songs, “Setting Off” and “Misty Shore”, develop the two key points of the work: the first dreamy and evocative, the second rhythmically fluid and enveloping.
What follows is a refined use of strings and orchestral suggestions (la title track) and variations on the theme (songs such as “Scenic Byway” and “Turning Tides” are harmonious reworkings of “Setting Off”), not without musically pregnant intuitions (“Leeward”) and bewitching breakbeats (“Liquid Mountains”) which partly dilute the smoother atmosphere of the album.
Perhaps less innovative album than the previous ones, the fifth episode of the Swedish musician is more inclined to detail – the vibraphone and the flute in “Take A Seat” and the Nouvelle vague style organ of “Windward” – and the presence behind the scenes of Malcom Catto of the Heliocentrics is absolutely not accidental: in fact, very few artists are capable of bringing together Roy Budd, Martin Denny and Quincy Jones with an elegance and a capacity for synthesis that leave the listener in amazement (“Liquid Mountains”).
23/11/2025
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
