Anton Toorell – Solos II [Vinyl]

Anton Toorells second solo album, Solos II, deepens and intensifies the six-string language introduced on his 2022 debut, Solos. Rather than widening his scope, the Swedish guitarist, composer and producer sharpens his focus, homing in on the physical and sonic relationship between player, instrument and tuning. The result is three extended pieces of cascading tonality that feel disciplined yet light, their conceptual frameworks always secondary to the luminous sounds Toorell draws from two guitars.Throughout Solos II, Toorell explores both the guitars potential for silvery, sometimes clashing textures and his own physical engagement with the instrument. Across Volta, Cripta and Scala, he plays two guitars simultaneously: one fretted with the left hand using hammer-ons and pull-offs, while the right hand activates mostly open strings on a guitar resting in his lap. Despite the inherent complexity of this approach, the music never feels busy or demonstrative. Technique remains a quiet servant to Toorells compositional instincts and improvisational sensitivity.The album leaves space for unplanned resonances and happy accidents, yet its structures are clear, resilient and finely balanced. The seventeen-minute Volta unfolds as a shimmering continuum, its repeated figures gently reshaped through minute inflections, creating a sensation of constant motion. Cripta spirals inward, cycling hypnotically in a way that recalls both Terry Rileys iterative minimalism and the hallucinatory guitar loops of early Seefeel.With the closing Scala, the recording environment comes fully into view. Captured in a 16th-century wine cellar at Palazzo Stabile in Piemonte, Italy, the room functions as a guiding presence and an implicit third instrument. Toorell tuned the guitars in response to the cellars reverberant character, seeking configurations that would open up the space itself.Across Solos II, something elusive and liminal hovers between the notes, music that feels architectural yet intimate, repetition structured but animated by human.A1. Volta B1. Cripta B2. Scala