Civilistjävel – ‘Live’ album review: you will never be able to buy this record
Civilistjävel is a Swedish word, and for those curious – which, from what I’m told, also entails some bewildered Swedes – it’s a military slur that means something like ‘Civilian Bastard’. It’s from a line in a Bo Widerberg film about the five labour protestors who were shot dead in Ådalen by the military in 1931. And aside from that, there was a time when little else was known about the ambient artist Civilistjävel.
We live in a period where more and more of these alluring ‘anonymous artists’ are coming to the fore. The appeal, however, is not waning because they continue to be far outstripped by the flipside: artists whose every detail is documented endlessly and thrust in front of us. Thus, anonymity provides some appealing mystery and a refreshing sense of art for art’s sake.
That is definitely the case with Civilistjävel. Much of the electronic producer’s music is archival, reinvigorated from experiments in sound he conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These were seemingly solo ventures in the truest sense. Weighty eyelids and coffees gone cold bear a heavy mark on the music, paired with the scopes of frosted tundras that make up the hazy, quilted world of Civilistjävel’s sound.
Perhaps what bears the heaviest mark, however, is that much of his work has only been heard from little limited runs of releases. And Live is no different. As expected, the record features footage of his recent shows at Spanners in London and Nonagon Festival on the Swedish island of Svanö, which apparently no longer meets the requirements needed to class itself as a small town, whereby the sawmill and sulphite factory have long since closed leaving only a frozen tennis court, a couple of treatment homes, a rickety marina, and not a lot else.
It’s important to dwell on this strange dichotomy of settings from which the Live material is taken. Civilistjävel’s work at once feels like those distorted moments where reality turns surreal as you gaze into a nightclub’s mirror for a moment, existing temporarily in a speckled reflection no bigger than a sheet of A4 as the rest of the world turns woozy, permeated by the rumble of a stereo system muffled by the cloak of a dimension.
And yet, when this remembrance of nights past snaps out of focus, the great earthiness of his ambience kicks in too, and you picture Civilistjävel at his window, steam swirling up from a hot drink, as snow blankets the world before him, and he burrows into a soundtrack of his own creation.
Thus, in some ways, although you wouldn’t have ever thought of Civilistjävel as a live project. For the most part, it hasn’t been. However, the collision of worlds this very limited cassette conjures is a great encapsulation of the appeal. You’ll never own it, you probably won’t even hear it, but should you stumble onto the work of Civilistjävel, you will find your world transformed just a little for a while, and that’s a sweet experience, like slumping into a warm bath.
It’s music for a world of one, the ripples of outside reality just about impeaching influence upon it.
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