The Inevitable Demise of Everything: An Interview with Niklas Sundin

"Rymdsynthskivor skall göras av rymdsynthmänniskor!"

Synth electronics and metal music have many points of shared history. Outside the use of synth in genres such as power metal and melodic death, there was also that period of time where black metal musicians in Scandinavia started to make synth albums and it sort of became its own thing that people like myself now write about. Recently, I received an email about this metal musician who made an ambient record and since I'm the one at the office with all of the weird vintage synth equipment on my desk, I was given the assignment. While a metal musician making an ambient record isn't new, this particular one and his approach to atmosphere was intriguing and hypnotic especially when I found myself at the office all alone with droning loops as my soundtrack. 

Niklas Sundin is a visual artist and musician most known for his work with the seminal melodic death band Dark Tranquility. Aside from playing with Dark Tranquility for most of his career (including on the renown 1995 release The Gallery) and in an early incarnation of Hammerfall, Sundin recently created Mitochondrial Sun, an atmospheric black and electronic project focused on electronics and heavy atmosphere. Wattudragaren is perhaps an obvious next step being a debut solo record and first under his name. While a melodic death luminary making an electronic record lends itself to preconceptions of moody medieval ambient or maybe even dark soundscapes, Sundin celebrates his fascination with esoterica with the genres of drone, musique concrete, electro acoustical, and the spectral middleground of sound collage.

Wattudragaren is an exercise in reflection, as Sundin takes stock of previous accomplishments and desires and distills them into sound paintings which sonically would be like giant paintings in quiet galleries. "Rösten'' near the end of the record is a 9 minute drone composition which displays a loop of music that is slowed to the point of being indistinguishable and a part of its own realm. Even the album's opener, "Reka," begins with a dwindling piano riff which slowly dissolves in an ocean of ether. Most of the sound sources within Wattudragaren are pushed far into its own universe and they exist as alien architecture for its listener to come and wander in. Wattudragaren's alchemy in taking real world sounds and transforming them into something formless and spectral is fascinating as at times you do not know what you are even listening to -- maybe perhaps you can identify an instrument or a piece of music ,but it is locked away in towers of haze.

I often liken musical records to artwork and the liminal nature of Sundin's music reminds me of French surrealist Yves Tanguy and his 1942 painting Divisibilité indéfinie (Indefinite Divisibility). Tanguy's work is an exploration of amorphous, almost aquatic forms arranged against endless backgrounds almost as if they were still lifes constructed by unknowable handlers. Divisibilité indéfinie looms over unknowable landscapes with its shadows being cast long into the horizon from some harsh and unseeable lightsource.. There is recognition of form but it is dissociative of meaning or connection to another part of our reality.  The experience with Wattudragaren, much like Tanguy's artwork, is a phantasmagorical tableau of memories and dreams which are no longer distinguishable from each other. They exist within themselves and are cobbled structures of esoterica.

Below, read an interview with Sundin about Wattudragaren.

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Wattudragaren is your first synth record but also (maybe) your first solo record. What brought you to this point in your musical career.

Nikolas Sundin: Well, after having played in the same broad genre for so many years with Dark Tranquillity, it felt natural to explore as much different musical ground as possible afterwards. I've released some electronic/experimental albums with a project called Mitochondrial Sun, but this is the first album under my own name and in this particular style. Creatively speaking, it was a nice challenge to really embrace minimalism for the first time.

What would you say are the main sonic inspirations for Wattudragaren?

The idea was to make a nature themed ambient album that would be instantly inviting while still having enough depth to warrant repeated listening. Most of my previous music can probably be perceived as dark or cathartic, but the intention here was to create something calm and introspective - a meditative album focused more on taking in the grandeur of the world than reacting against its shortcomings.

Making organic and droning “nature music” is obviously nothing unique, but hopefully there’s no single influence that's directly traceable in the “Wattudragaren” songs. It’s more a matter of wanting to experiment in this general style and then combining the sum of my experiences and all the different influences already present in my head into something of my own.

But just to give an example, William Basinski’s “The Disintegration Loops” was quite inspirational - maybe not so much on a musical level, but in the way that the music gradually becomes more fragile and dissolves over time. It’s easy to connect this to the passing of seasons and the inevitable demise of everything, and some of the songs on the album definitely explore this sensation. In terms of the melodies themselves, I aimed for a sense of nostalgia and wonder that probably comes from the same source as a lot of dungeon synth and early electronic music.

What is the process like for creating these songs?

The starting point was to establish a basic mood for each track, which often began with simple field recordings (bird song, a running river, wind and so on). From there on, the process differed from song to song. I sometimes used regular instruments, but everything has been processed and manipulated and fed through various effects. The goal was to create emotionally charged soundscapes where it’s not important to be able to figure out exactly what the different layers of sound are or how they came to be. The timbre and sound of each element were just as important as the notes played.

Some tape samples were incorporated as well. I found an old riff cassette from the early 90’s, which was nothing remarkable in itself - just me strumming on an acoustic guitar - but I liked the ambience so much that I sampled a few seconds, slowed everything down and added a ton of reverb and granular synthesis. In the end, you probably can’t hear that there even was a guitar there in the first place, but it fits the purpose perfectly. It’s a small sliver of time that got repurposed.

While everything was assembled in a DAW, it was was still important to have some analog randomness in the sound, so the mastering was taken care of by Anders Lagerfors at Nacksving, which is one of Sweden’s most unique recording studios and a place with a ton of weird vintage equipment.

You are making individual hand drawn artwork for each of the special editions. What led you to take on such a monumental task and what is the process like?

Part of the reason is to reconnect with the idea that the album - as a physical object and as a collection of songs that form a larger story - still is important. Personalizing every copy in this way is a way of making it matter just a bit more. It’s also a two-birds-with-one-stone situation. Over the years, I’ve gotten lots of requests from people wanting to buy original drawings, but it’d feel weird to just make random illustrations and put them up for sale. This way, people can get original artwork as well as music and at a lower cost than what established artists normally sell their illustrations for. It’s also a fun way for me to experiment with different styles and techniques as well as getting out of my comfort zone a bit (most of the drawings are “improvised” and made without any sketches or other preparations). It's not an enormous area to cover with ink, so it might sound like more of a monumental task than what it actually is. But sure, there were times where I questioned if this was a good idea or complete stupidity, ha ha! This is also the reason why it’s a very limited edition.

In a larger perspective - and this might be way too dystopian - releasing the album this way is also a way of authenticating the work. We’re probably not that many years away from the point where AI-generated music will be indistinguishable from that made by people. It’s likely that we will be able to give detailed prompts along the lines of “45-minute album sounding like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest having a project together in 1985, sci-fi lyrics in hexameter, one guitarist using a Fender Stratocaster, the other one a BC Rich Warlock with old strings, drummer having a slight knee injury while recording” and end up with something that sounds completely believable given those premises. From there, additional prompts will give you artwork, a behind-the-scenes studio documentary, live footage from the secret release show at CBGB and so forth. I’m sure that there will be a 3D printing service that will deliver the LP to your doorstep as well. Against this potential scenario - which I find terrifying but perfectly plausible - releasing a humble nature album with hand-drawn artwork takes on a different meaning. The theme of the music gets amplified if you view the album itself as part of the same movement towards disintegration and entropy that it describes.

Dungeon synth's lore begins its history in the 1990s with black metal musicians making solo synth recordings. During your time making metal music in Sweden were you aware of any of the acts like Mortiis, Depressive Silence, Wongraven, or Henri Sorvali's project Lunar Womb. Were you or anyone in your music circle making ambient synth music?

The Mortiis and Wongraven albums were placed in the “extreme metal” section in the record stores, with stickers promoting the connection to Emperor and Satyricon respectively, so I’m sure that most metal people here were aware of them and had at least a vague idea of what they sounded like.

In our local group of musicians, some people really took a liking to this sound. For others, it wasn’t their cup of tea at all, or they were skeptical about metal musicians being too eclectic. I remember someone passionately making the point that “space synth albums should only be made by space synth people!” (sounds funnier in Swedish) when Neptune Towers was being played in a store. This kind of thinking was probably common everywhere at the time, and I guess that it wasn’t until some years later that the link between metal and more ambient music styles got normalized.

I enjoyed Mortiis’ albums, both musically and visually (John Bauer was a legendary artist in Sweden) and appreciated the intention to craft a whole “universe” around his persona, but I wasn’t completely hooked. At that time, I was a bit tired of everything that felt too rooted in the D&D/Tolkien fantasy realm; my interest in the past had moved towards more "authentic" history and mythology, if that makes sense. For example, I owned an album with an accompanying book called “Svarta Jordens Sång” (“Song of the Black Earth”) that consisted of music played on instruments built from archeological findings - an attempt to accurately recreate how things actually might have sounded many hundred years ago - and that sort of thing seemed to satisfy my ambient/atmospheric needs a bit more than albums that was trying to convey a similar archaic vibe with electronic instruments. As a music geek kid, you can get these weird hang-ups. I would happily enjoy ambient space/astral synth since my idea of space included civilizations with electronic instruments, whereas if the conceptual setting was an ancient castle instead, my brain would go "hmmm...this Casio sound doesn't quite belong here" and break the illusion. Luckily, this was a temporary fixation. Come to think of it, "Svarta Jordens Sång" is probably one of the earliest “Wattudragaren” inspirational sources since I listened to it endlessly at a formative age. A lot of it is just nature sounds and someone hitting a rock with another rock, but the atmosphere felt so strong and genuine.

I do remember some local people experimenting with ambient synth music, but mainly for their own enjoyment. Any keyboard-owning metalhead will probably end up toying around with this kind of sound at some point, and maybe even recording it, but I don’t think anything was properly released. However, this was almost 30 years ago, so it’s not impossible that there were some local ambient/weirdo/dungeon synth releases that I just don’t remember, or wasn’t aware of in the first place.

For those people who were into the synth side projects, can you recall them enjoying anything else that was synth and ambient. Was Brian Eno or Tangerine Dream big among the metal circles? What about new age people like Enya or Yanni? (I have a working hypothesis and need more data.)

Definitely. I even think that the first At the Gates biography from 1991 or so cites King Crimson, Tangerine Dream and Dead can Dance as influences. Most people enjoyed discovering new and exciting stuff to listen to, which was more of a treasure hunt in the pre-internet days. I don’t quite remember exactly what was listened to and when, but I’d be surprised if Brian Eno and the likes weren’t on the radar. There for sure was some krautrock and weird Kosmische Musik in circulation. Something else that was popular in underground metal circles and that maybe can be a missing link for you was bands like Änglagård and Landberk - progressive rock with (at times) a strong nature/folklore vibe. I’m sure that everyone that made atmospheric synth/ambient back had listened to and loved this track for example: 

As for Enya, some of the albums were enormously popular, and you’d constantly hear the songs on the radio, TV or even in stores, so I’m sure that it inspired people to some extent. I don’t think that I know Yanni, but it’s possible that others did. I do recall Nåid being popular though - it’s not new age as such, but it has a kind of shamanic vibe mixed with electronics that sound very typical for their time (released in 1995): 

Were you aware at all of a current revival of "dungeon synth" which took inspiration from these projects in the 1990s?

I've understood from just being online that there’s a revival going on, with a healthy DIY attitude surrounding it all. I’ve only scratched the surface, since many artists seem to be insanely productive with a ton of releases in very little time, but Hole Dweller and Mors Vitaque really impressed me so far.

It’s a genre where you can express very much with the most basic of tools, which is great. No fancy equipment is needed, just creativity and imagination. Apart from the RPG aesthetics in all its different forms, I also like the emphasis on physical media. The good old cassette - with its inherent imperfections, warmth and nostalgia qualities - really fits this kind of music. I’ve kind of gone full circle on this: Many years ago, I got rid of most of my record collection, convinced that just using mp3’s made more sense than having a lot of clutter in the apartment. There was also some well-intended zen notion of not wanting to own too much stuff, but I didn’t understand that one misses out on so much of the tactile experience if going completely non-physical. A lot of the associations and connections that you’d otherwise have to an album simply won’t form. This is one of the reasons why I decided to release “Wattudragaren” as a limited edition digipak with custom hand-drawn artwork on every copy. It’s a bit insane, and probably a futile gesture in the end, but it somehow validates the album existing not just as sound in the ether but also as an object in the real world.

You currently work in animation and graphic design and from your showreel your work is bright and accessible. The recent SAMI Christmas card with Santa riding in a boat with a happy penguin is a bit more commercial than Thyrfing's Vansinnesvisor. Do you enjoy the different worlds of illustration between the metal realm and the rest of the world?

Yep, they’re different to put it mildly, ha ha! Just as with music, I enjoy not being tied to one style or genre. People are complex and contain both highs and lows, so I don’t see a contradiction in - for example - designing an album sleeve for an industrial noise album one day and illustrating a children’s book the next day.

As an album designer, your portfolio is vast among the metal world. What was your favorite record to design?

I’m usually pretty pedantic and tend to notice the inevitable small details that could have been improved if there was more time available, but so far, Dark Tranquillity’s “Moment” probably is the fave - it was one of those rare projects where everything just seemed to fall in the right place from the start. There were also albums where the creation process was very rewarding but where the result maybe hasn't aged that well, and vice versa.

Give me something to listen to this weekend. One of the records should be something old and then something current(ish).

For something older that’s in line with the nature theme, let’s go for Hedningarna’s “Kaksi!” from 1992. They were a folk music group that were pretty hyped in Sweden for a few years, building their own instruments and being very traditional while still forward thinking (they later released a “techno” album which is surprisingly good). For something newer, Aindulmedir’s “Star Lore” is fantastic. I’m sure that a lot of people reading this already are familiar with it.

Give me something to watch and read. 

I’m not really up to date with TV shows, but my recommendation would be the 2010-ish sci-fi series Flashforward. Totally underrated. For reading - since this is a site for music nerds that are likely to like Rush - I just got the new Geddy Lee biography, which is said to be really good.

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Wattudragaren released March 4th, 2024 and can be purchased here.

Streaming/purchase: niklassundin.bandcamp.com

EU distribution: www.inertial-music.com

General info: www.wattudragaren.com