Joachim Nordwall is deeply interested in the power of sound, and how sound can create certain states of mind – but also the other way around; how certain states of mind can create sound. Since his teens in the late 80s, growing up in the remote, crude south east Sweden, he has experimented with something he prefers to call ‘Psychic Broadcasting’ rather than composition, at first in the still almost active analogue synth drone duo Alvars Orkester [“Interference” – Ash International # Ash 6.9, 2006]. Nordwall went on to play in various experimental music projects, spent time in Paris and London. Back in Sweden he formed iDEAL Recordings in 1998 and joined the sweaty avant punk rock group Kid Commando the year after, touring like mad, eventually hitting rock bottom in 2005. After the death of KC, he formed the ritual rock/drone band The Skull Defekts which has kept him busy ever since (recently releasing records on Chicago-based Thrill Jockey Records). In 2006 his first solo album was released under his ‘The Idealist’ moniker, entitled “I Am The Fire”. A few years in the making, the album offered was a deep study of Nordwall’s interior life, during a time when everything was pitch black inside. Today, Joachim Nordwall is very active curating his iDEAL label and organisation for festivals, concert series and sound art exhibitions. He is also the chairman of the legendary Stockholm venue for experimental stage art, Fylkingen. Nordwall is a man that lives and breathes sound.
A few years have passed and “Ignition” is here, Joachim Nordwall’s second solo album. Recorded under brighter circumstances but still with many shadows present. “Ignition” is on one hand a solid, highly electronic trip, on the other hand a very sensitive, analogue and warm drone symphony. “Ignition” was released (and is still available) on cassette – also on Ash International, in 2010, thus asserting the primacy of the analogue format.