ALC 0067 Solo Duo - Progressive Classical Guitar Duos

Solo Duo was born in a cold winter, in Sweden, on an island in the Baltic Sea: the island of Gotland. The album consists of 2 suites plus 2 tracks, all composed during an artist residency that guitarist composer Mats Hedberg spent at the International Composition Center in Visby, the island's capital. An album for two guitars, both played by Hedberg, it chronicles the powerful atmosphere the artist breathed during long walks on the island's beaches, lashed by wind and swells.The composer, strongly inspired by nature, combines in this work melodies and harmonies purely Nordic, with a very personal research on the rhythmic level. The songs are almost all written in odd rhythms. Very unusual sequences, which in their combination, despite their rhythmic complexity, are completely harmonic and totally at the service of the inner melody. The first Suite is dedicated to Freja, famous Scandinavian goddess of war. Wife of Odin, she was, in the Scandinavian Olympus, the personification of beauty and love. Hedberg writes, in 10 movements, a hymn to her independence and sensuality. The second Suite instead, divided into 10 single tracks, tells about the island of Gotland, its various aspects, the impressions that the artist has had in his long wanderings along its coasts, in the visits to its villages and the meeting with its inhabitants. Two other single tracks complete this particular project: "Ade" (The River of Hell) and "Hyss" (Spite) and are rhythmic jokes. An album inspired by the power of Nordic nature, with something magical and indescribable that makes Solo Duo a special project: a musical essence that is decisive but also sweet, playful and refined, blending storytelling and spontaneity.