Eric Malmberg - "Verklighet & Beat"

Julia and I listen to this album when the sun shines. We took a trip out to Langley on transit, and it was more than an hour both ways. I brought a splitter so we could both enjoy music. Verklighet & Beat (read: Reality and beat) brought on the aural kaleidoscope and colored our sunny journey home.

Each song's principle melody is timeless. I swear I've heard it before. I check the previous song to see if maybe the melody had been used earlier in the album, but no, this one is different. It's sort of like a soundtrack to something you do habitually, like cleaning your kitchen or taking a walk in the woods. You never do it quite the same way or see the same things each time.

Eric Malmberg plays the Hammond Organ; you know, that warm, shimmering surface of a lake sounding organ. The one that psychs up a Toronto Maple Leafs crowd between face-offs. One song sounds like a soundtrack to a 1950's spy movie in Europe, and the next sounds like a paper Chinese dragon on fire hurtling through a psychedellic worm hole of trumpets and martial drums. There's marching drums on the album, but they never sound grim. Think, rather, of a Pokemon celebration parade, but not scored by underpaid, underfed Japanese composers. These pieces have full orchestra and percussion; a really full band sound. It's a menagerie, and at times it squiggles and stomps so much that it's cause to grin and dance wildly.

Malmberg was part of a famous organ/drum duo called Sagor & Swing before he went all solo. He’s also the author of the comic Happy Hammond in Slumberland. His melodies are minor key, and yet sound very positively charged. He seems pretty happy. I mean, look at his picture. He looks pretty blissed out. Those flowers behind him? He's creating them with his mind. Eric Malmberg makes flowers grow with his mind. That, I think, is captured on this record.

He's also Swedish, which can help explain. Sweden, despite the high taxes, is a wonderful place to be. I've been there. The air is cleaner than any air I've ever breathed. Global warming is scared of places like Sweden. Eric Malmberg is likely fighting off global warming with his own warm shuffling and shimmering organ pieces. Let's just say it right now: Verklighet & Beat is anti-global warming and comes highly recommended.