Content:
Press
"A newspaper feature on women in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is the point of departure for Skog’s Modus vivendi. Yes indeed, she’s produced absorbing orchestral music that vibrates with powerful images and processes."
(on Modus vivendi, Camilla Lundberg, Expressen)
"A song suite that builds an evocative cabaret atmosphere around the naked voice, which conveys, unwavering, images from the unique perspective of a strange child."
(on Fyra sånger, Martin Nyström, Dagens Nyheter)
"Ylva Skog’s Terra Firma is, in all its foam rubber softness, a suggestively padded tango."
(on Terra Firma, Camilla Lundberg, Expressen)
"...a melancholy Nordic sound that has merged symbiotically with French and Latin American expressional modes."
(on Ça va? Ça va!, Thomas Anderberg, Dagens Nyheter)
Tony Lundman, 2003
English translation: Neil Betteridge
Ylva Skog has composed the music with a Swedish translation by Ingvar Björkeson, and Ingrid Falk sings in Swedish. This is one of four Baudelaire poems that Ylva Skog has used for a set of compositions called Baudelaire Songs. The tune is faded in, slowly rising out of silence on the gentle, introspectively dancing motion of Mårten Falk’s guitar. The poem is carried high on Ingrid Falk’s more than beautiful vocal timbre, like a goddess carrying a bowl of clear, cool water above her head, through a thirsting and languishing crowd. There is a quality of serene pain in this melody, this voice, this text: a blessing withheld, a relief not granted easily, a rest that you have to be worthy of: eavesdropping on the angels. Can the spirit of Baudelaire’s poem be represented better? I doubt it.
Ingrid Falk flies her vocals in golden trajectories through Charles Baudelaire’s poem, accompanied by Mårten Falk on his acoustic guitar. It’s a perfect match. The poem seems to have been born into this environment. It’s a soirée miniature; a light Lieder kind of incident, which let’s the listener descend lightly into a situation that allows for rest and recollections.
Ingvar loco Nordin