Sverre Knut Johansen - Still Time (2024) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

Still Time, the new Spotted Peccary release from Norwegian ambient electronic artist Sverre Knut Johansen, offers a departure from the cosmic themes of his prior work to an earthbound one: animal extinctions affected by climate change. With this latest work, the veteran composer blends traditional instrumentation and ambient vocalizations with the spacious textures that defined his previous work to capture both the beauty of the natural world and the urgency of its threat.

Johansen uses human voices throughout the album to represent a warning of extinction. This effect is stunning on opener “Massive Extinction,” which begins with a rich and rumbling texture, the sound of wind through a wasteland. Then, a lamenting vocal melody floats over a building dirge of noise—the unstoppable tide of turmoil rising below its heralding hymn, until even that last voice falls silent. Yet the title track “Still Time (Saving Our Planet)” paints a picture of beauty rather than one of devastation. Here, glittering glockenspiels dance over rattles and trills, a quiet scene of insects flitting through a forest clearing, before a cinematic drumbeat erupts with heroic grandeur. And “Rhinoceros on Large Salt Pan” is complex yet serene, its warm chords shimmering like sunlight on sand dunes. Throughout this is a soundtrack of immense consideration.

“The Desert Elephants of Namibia” features sounds depicting elephants created with the Sequential Prophet X hybrid synthesizer, used like brass over a marching drumline and orchestral trills before the piece climaxes in an accelerando of dissonant strings. Johansen again returns to this synth for realizing the sounds of flamingos on the ethereal “The Golden Flamingo Lake.” The album’s finale “Cheetah’s Realm (At the Masai Mara National Reserve)” captures all the Still Time sounds in one epic seven-minute journey, building from a yearning piano intro into a stunning climax of polyrythmic drums and desert-wide textures. Then, the piano refrain returns to beckon one final climax—a subtle IDM beat anchoring clattering tribal drums and yearning textures in a gripping harmony.

Still Time is both urgent and hopeful, blending a myriad of organic and inorganic sounds to capture both the beauty of the natural world and the dire imminence of its destruction. But with this sense of urgency, Johansen’s stunning cinematic crescendos come both plea and warning—a call to save our fellow creatures and earth while we still can. Yet even in moments of darkness, Johansen leaves the listener with a sense of hope, imploring us that "there is still time to turn this around.”

Tracklist:
01 - Massive Extinction
02 - Still Time (Saving Our Planet)
03 - Rhinoceros On Large Salt Pan
04 - Storm Is Coming (At Walvis Bay)
05 - White Clouds Above Giraffe
06 - Dead Vlei - The Most Beautiful Dead Place On Earth
07 - Oryx In Yellow Light
08 - The Desert Elephants Of Namibia
09 - The Golden Flamingo Lake
10 - A Cheetah's Realm (At The Masai Mara National Reserve)


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