Olof Cornéer of the insanely popular Dada Life is preparing to release the second part of the trilogy from his project called Night Gestalt. This album, ‘New Glasir’ features Cornéer’s creative and almost haunting style as he navigates through the album, leading the listener on a ride through a spacey experience. It could almost be the soundtrack to an astral travelers dream.
Born from Cornéer’s nostalgia for the electronic halcyon days of his youth, Night Gestalt is light years away from the champagne-popping, world-touring, mainstage-headlining EDM of Dada Life. “Night Gestalt was born a few years ago when I felt the urge to get back to the electronic music I loved as a kid in the ‘90s,” Cornéer says of the creation of the Night Gestalt project. “I wanted to get back to the feeling—not the sound—I got from that music, so I started creating the music as Night Gestalt in 2014. It’s a bit ambient, but it’s also more song-based. It’s experimental and electronic, but it’s also a bit post-classical.”
New Glasir is scheduled for release on Friday, May 10, via Slow Future Vault. I had the opportunity to catch up with Cornéer and discuss the project.
I have a vague understanding of gestalt but being partnered with “Night” is not only interesting, it is intriguing. Please give us a deeper understanding of the project name: Night Gestalt.
“To be honest I don’t really know. It’s just a feeling I tried to capture. The music is based around arpeggios, which are patterns…i e. gestalts. Night? I guess they are patterns of darkness.”
Going into the project, did you have a musical theme in mind or did the sound evolve as you delved deeper into it?
“I had a pretty clear vision when I started. I wanted to pair the sound of my old acoustic piano and bleeps that ring out in space. After starting to work on the album I realized I wanted the album to be sort of melancholic, dripping in VHS-nostalgia – instead of black and white as the first album.”
Let’s talk about the inspiration and theme to ‘And The Bells Sang.’ What is the message behind the song? There is a sound sort of sitting over the music. What is that and what is its significance?
“It’s a simple broken chord, and arpeggio, coming over and over again, but played in different registers and switched between the piano and the Moog synth, so that there is never any real repetition. I like that. It’s static but it’s moving all the time too.”
Can you explain the difference in the writing process between this project and Dada Life?
“It’s all about feelings. For Dada Life it’s the crashing-into-a-wall-with-a-smile-feeling. For Night Gestalt it’s something else, something about bells ringing out in space and listening to the silence between them as much as the actual notes.”
As New Glasir being the middle of a trio of concept albums – where does the album fit, conceptually and can you give us a bigger picture on the concept of the of all three albums?
“They are telling a story in reversed chronological order. The first one is about the end. New Glasir is about life on earth right after a catastrophe of some kind almost has wiped out humanity. The last will be about the actual apocalypse and the events leading up to it. I wanted them in this order so I could get as close to the apocalypse as possible, because it’s happening right now: global warming, financial meltdowns, wars.”
Anything you want to say to your fans?
“Just step into the void.”
-Tommy Marz
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