Lars Hollmer - Lars Hollmer 80-88 (The Siberian Circus)

All Music Guide

The Siberian Circus (previously issued by MNW Records as Lars Hollmer 8088) is a thoughtfully assembled singledisc compilation of the Swedish composer/keyboardist's five CDs released during the 1980s, beginning with 1981's XII Sibiriska Cyklar and ending with Vendeltid, the 1988 album by the first incarnation of Hollmer's Looping Home Orchestra. These recordings represent Lasse's first forays as a solo artist, and their assembly here illustrates considerable artistic growth from the elegant simplicity of the accordiondriven "Boeves Psalm" to the stunningly beautiful arrangement of Vendeltid's title track. The Siberian Circus presents a decent selection of material from his five albums of the 1980s, but of necessity much of his greatest music of the decade is missing in action. Simply put, this snapshot can hardly begin to cover the quality and diversity of his '80s output. Moreover, the final three albums covered here, 1983's Från Natt Idag, 1985's Tonöga, and 1988's Vendeltid, were th...e strongest releases of the five, with hardly a single track that any Hollmer listener should miss. The compilers must have been in quite a quandary when devoting only a bit more than half of one CD to tunes from these three discs and trying to decide what to leave out. The fact that the ghostly and mysterious "Through Glass" from Vendeltid didn't make the cut is nearly unforgivable. Still, there is much of Hollmer's wacky side from his first two albums on display here, including eccentric vocalizing and considerable mischief: a waltzing drunken chorus here ("Avlägsen Strandvals"), a rousing cowboy polka complete with yodeling and frantic harmonica there ("Starlep Signs"), and even some Reichian minimalism performed with baby vocals, bells, and thumb pianos ("180 Sekunder Hemma") not to mention an overall earthy and homegrown quality in which anything and everything lying around the house might be used as a musical instrument. What a goof. These examples of Hollmer sequestered in the Chickenhouse and unafraid to sound eccentric and demented are missing in the subsequent compilation of Tonöga/FrÃ¥n Natt Idag/Vendeltid, a twoCD set with bonus tracks issued by Resource Records in 1998. Still, that latter set is probably a better choice than this one, despite the extra cash needed to fork over for two discs. Hollmer simply got better and better as the decade progressed, so a twodisc package of his later work from the '80s is preferable to a singledisc set that skims across all of his work from the period. Nevertheless, if you are investigating Lars Hollmer for the first time and want to limit yourself to a single CD, The Siberian Circus is a worthwhile first step into his utterly unique musical world. - Dave Lynch, All Music Guide Read more Less