Nesrin Sen
type Nesrin Sen
photo: mauro rongione
Nesrin Sen – type Nesrin Sen
Nesrin Sen [composition, lyrics, vocals, acoustic guitar] – Pietu Kaipainen [acoustic & electric guitar] – Jerker Eklund [slide guitar] – Daniel Kellander [electric guitar] – Daniel Möller [piano, composition and lyrics on track 9 with Nesrin] – Peter Lindquist [trumpet] – Cecilia Gustafsson [viola, violin] – Madeleine Johansson [cello] – Anna Edmark [violin] – Mia Dahlgren [cello] – Johanna Eriksson [viola] – Rebecca Debreceni [violin] – Johanna Björklid [flute] – Andreas Jönsson [flute] – Amanda Östling [clarinet] – Mathias Garnås [bass] – Anders Larsson [bass] – Jakob Sävhammar [bass] – Mikael Kankaanpää [bass] – Fredric Österlund [drums] – Andreas Eriksson [drums] – Hugo Björk [drums] – Carl-Johan Rasmusson [drums] – Fredrik Österberg [drums]
Arrangements: Daniel Möller
Duration: 42:55
Nesrin Productions
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1. The Dream That I keep [3:07]
2. Ocean [5:47]
3. Star 10 [3:15]
4. Fairytale Baby 3:49]
5. Blue City [3:31]
6. Love Is Like Fire [3:20]
7. Rainbow God [2:53]
8. So Long [4:41]
9. Out Of The Clouds [3:41]
10. Longing For Sleep [5:21]
11. Rose Garden + [3:28]
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The quotes from Nesrin Sen’s lyrics that I use below are not at all complete, but just compelling fragments from her songs.
Nesrin Sen’s first CD production – type Nesrin Sen (2002) – comes artistically and musically fully-fledged. I wouldn’t add or deduct anything, and some of these songs are primetime art, already classical songs on first hearing, while all the others are very enjoyable. In an interview with Nesrin she says that she’d worked with the material on and off for ten years before putting the CD out, i.e. from when she was 14!
Track 1: The Dream That I Keep
This is a steady, sturdy rolling melody, traversing a mythical land where the Dream Keeper resides, elusive and unreliable. This is good rock n’ roll with an ambiguous semantic shift; Nesrin Sen providing some advice:
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Never share your love with a dream keeper.
Never share your dreams with a dream seeker
Never touch a dream keeper, never trust a dream seeker.
The distance is not big but it grows
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(or, like Dylan says: It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there…)
Later Nesrin observes:
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Everybody is on the run again
from the dreams we do not dare to fulfill
from the things we do not dare to feel
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| and this is the core of this song; this thought: our fear of our dreams, again, like Dylan says: |
Well, I met somebody face to face and I had to remove my hat,
She's everything I need and love but I can't be swayed by that.
It frightens me, the awful truth of how sweet life can be,
But she ain't a-gonna make me move,
I guess it must be up to me
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| And the line I’m after is, of course: |
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It frightens me, the awful truth of how sweet life can be
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Ingvar Loco Nordin: Aspects on Living # 3479
Yes, it’s often easier to stand back when an opportunity rises, than to fall forwards – but my experience, short and brief as it may be – of Nesrin Sen, is that she is NOT one to stand back, to fall away, but one brave person who allows herself the falling forward, time after time, through poetic brainstorms, disjointed club performances, live studio sessions and so forth!
Nonetheless, The Dream That I Keep is a worthy opener of her first album, with plenty force to get the show moving!
Track 2: Ocean
Ocean is a startling example of Nesrin’s compositional skills. It’s an incredibly varied melody, changing tempi and force like a capricious spring wind flurry in April. Some of the bars are among the most beautiful I’ve heard; Nesrin’s voice embellishing the texture of the composition with the wild honey of her wild talent; all the fragrances of forest present: resin and bark and butterfly orchids and the smell of sunlight through the years.
The musical arrangements, too, are fluid, elegant, precise and candid
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I don’t want to be lonely no I don’t want to be.
Ocean, ocean come and take me; deep blue black ocean.
I buried my cat today; gave him a shining cross
I loved him so much
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Track 3: Star 10
A song about prostitution. When I interviewed Nesrin she told me about this song; how some people would misinterpret it, actually believing that it was autobiographical.
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When I was getting a lay
with a rich man who could save me some pain.
I did not intend to go this far
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It’s a peculiar song in Nesrin’s oeuvre, because it shows some some vocal experimenting that doesn’t show up elsewhere.
The music has a repetitious, steady, strange-beat bass line, and the electric guitar is a trashy, jangling Neil Young axe.
On the whole, this is a bagatelle in Nesrin’s output, but still a sharp-cut miniature, not to be overlooked.
Track 4: Fairytale Baby
Fairytale Baby is a naked song, with just the bare necessities of Nesrin’s voice and her acoustic guitar; a storyteller telling a story at some lonely, secluded spot in life. The song is meandering along like a river in Lapland, reflecting the light of existence as it travels the observations, the emotions – the rancid comments:
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Fairytale baby is awake.
Fairytale baby is awake; she has only one more
promise left to break.
Fairytale baby is awake
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Ingvar Loco Nordin: Aspects on Living # 11793
Track 5: Blue City
This song begins as haphazard and unassuming as Fairytale Baby, climbing absentmindedly like a fly on a window… but soon a grander accompaniment is introduced – one of those fine Daniel Möller arrangements.
And suddenly, with tremendous might, the whole orchestra stands tall and tight behind Nesrin like a timber palisade, as she blurts:
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If you don’t believe me, why should I believe in you.
If you don’t believe me, why should I believe in, believe in you.
I am still here and I swear to tell the truth, I swear to tell the truth.
I am so tired of proving myself
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Nesrin stands firm in front of the massive orchestral might, like a Joan of Arc with her spiritual convictions untarnished, her hair flying high around her head, intense light flaming behind her. It’s a Phil Spector sound web, no less!
Track 6: Love Is Like Fire
It begins as a slow, sad ballad, with a transparent minimum of accompaniment:
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I am lost with no hope and I am drowning in love.
I don’t think I will be staying too long.
I’ve been sleeping all day, got no words left to say
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The melody changes brilliantly and with lust, as muted, golden jazz garlands trumpets – the Miles Davis way - sneak in and open Nesrin’s jazz singer idiom – and she has studied jazz singing for a few years, so it makes sense.
This song is a mastery of small means, resulting in a most precious jazz ballad, original, beautiful, ablaze in a calm fire of sentiments.
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Love is like a fire that blooms in me
Love is like a flower that blooms in May
That is when I will say I won’t stay no way no way no way.
I won’t stay
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Nesrin’s voice soars at its most tender, brittle, soul-catching vibrancy in this entry. I have visions of whitewashed houses huddling on slopes above a very blue ocean, anatomies warm with sunlight as time moves imperceptibly across noon. This voice carries far into my imagination.
Track 7: Rainbow God
Rainbow God is one of those songs that set Nesrin Sen apart from the mainstream of singers/songwriters. It is one of the tracks on this album that I chose to call classic, by virtue of a seamless merger of text and melody, of sentiments and the background radiation of Life – and, not least, by virtue of the sheer, anxious beauty of the song… and the transparent beauty of the voice that modulates and carries it across the void between the beings. An outstanding tune on the surface of this planet!
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Did not know what I was doing to you
Did not know what I was doing to you.
I sometimes knew nothing about fear
I closed my eyes and pretend its not there
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Nesrin’s voice, right from the outset, flows like water across the pebbles of a Lapland creek with exquisite glacier water, thousands of years old and always new, so transparent, and yet reflecting. Her voice seems illuminated with the essence of many lifetimes, and I recognize this flickering light-source from the vast spaces within. Beauty! Senseless delicacy of the moment.
Track 8: So Long
Here is a tune in which Nesrin has allowed her voice to blend in more with the accompaniment, to retreat some into the grove of instrumental sounds, into the texture of the orchestra, like a figurine on an old Dalecarlian tapestry, attached to the wall above the wooden kitchen sofa in the necessary fragrance of dark, home-ground coffee.
The song itself could easily belong in a British tradition, all the way from bands like Steeleye Span and on, even though Nesrin’s bar-bending key-shifts are more exclusively developed.
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It is harder to run when it feels like that’s all you ever did.
It is harder to scream when it feels like that’s all you ever did.
oh oh I have been down for so long.
oh oh I have been hunted by ghost.
oh oh you don’t scare me any more
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Ingvar Loco Nordin: Aspects on Living # 751
Track 9: Out Of The Clouds
A tremendous refrain on this one, or, rather, a forceful motto:
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Come on, lets bring the sun out of the clouds!
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The tempo is quick, the song quite spiritual, catchy. It grows on you fast! Some of Nesrin’s singing in this song is her very best, rising like a kite towards the windy sky, swaying back and forth, before descending like a falcon into the grass.
An up beat, beat-up shred of melodic ideas, gathered on the fly and brought home! Yessir, baby!
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Rocks tumbling down on me; feel repressed and pretty heavy.
You eat my soul and drink my blood but I still live and carry on somehow.
Come on lets bring the sun out of the clouds
Come on lets bring the sun out of the clouds
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Track 10: Longing For Sleep
Now this is another of the songs of Nesrin Sen that was a classic already when it was being written! This is a formidable example of Nesrin’s writing and singing! To me, this is the prime choice on type Nesrin Sen. It belongs in a class characterized by songs like Yesterday and As Tears Go By and even Stairway To Heaven. Amazing, devastating beauty and sorrow, perfectly painted in thick, slow oil in the melody line, lightings and fragrances shifting out of century after century!
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And I could not give what you wanted
and I could not give my soul and all those memories away.
and all those memories away.
Little by little I washed away
Little by little you made me pay for nothing I did; for all that I am
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Track 11: Rose Garden
A fragile little melody, timeless in its modest imagery, fitting well into the collection, even if it wouldn’t be strong enough on its own. Nesrin’s voice can carry even weaker songs far, though, and this is an example of that.
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In the morning, in the night where my love holds me tight.
Take all my kisses to the rose garden.
Bet it will grow darling
Bet it will grow darling
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A peculiarity is that an extra song, a would-be number 12, maybe, is attached at the end, after an unusually long break, without being mentioned in the track listing. It’s also a short miniature, which Nesrin lifts to a higher level just by her way of expressing it, and hey, it’s an alternative take of track 4, Fairytale Baby! And it sounds like a live take. Is it?
Whatever the case, this premier CD by Nesrin Sen is a great achievement!
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