There’s something deeply unsettling about the way øjeRum’s “Cut Paper Flowers” refuses to stay in one place. Like a flower that seems almost real but crumbles into paper dust when touched, this album is both captivating and disorienting — a collection of soundscapes that feel both organic and artificial, natural yet not quite of this world.
Danish artist Paw Grabowski, who records under the moniker øjeRum, has a knack for creating these kinds of sonic paradoxes. With a discography that spans numerous labels and includes releases on esteemed imprints like Room40, Quiet Details, and LINE, øjeRum has established himself as a master of minimal, emotive, and deeply textural music. “Cut Paper Flowers”, his latest release on LINE, continues this exploration with four pieces that are as hypnotic as they are haunting.
The album opens with “Coreless Whisper”, an eight-minute meditation that feels like the sonic equivalent of walking through a garden at dusk. The sounds here are delicate and airy, like leaves rustling in a gentle breeze, but there’s a weight to the composition that suggests something more ominous lurking beneath the surface. Acoustic elements blend seamlessly with electronic textures, creating a soundscape that’s both familiar and alien. It’s a track that lulls you into a false sense of security, only to leave you with a lingering sense of unease.
This unease continues with “Sine Garden”, the album’s 15-minute centerpiece. Here, øjeRum crafts a dreamlike landscape where sine waves flutter like insects, hovering over a bed of lush, vegetative sounds. There’s an almost hypnotic quality to the way the track unfolds, with its cyclical motifs and slow, deliberate pacing. But as you’re drawn deeper into the garden, you start to notice the cracks in the facade — the dissonant tones that disrupt the tranquility, the moments of silence that feel more like voids than pauses. It’s a track that invites you to lose yourself in its beauty, only to remind you that you’re never truly safe.
“Wound Flower” takes this sense of unease even further. At nearly 17 minutes, it’s the longest track on the album, and also the most disorienting. The title alone suggests something that’s both beautiful and broken, and the music reflects this duality. The piece begins with a gentle, almost comforting melody, but it quickly devolves into something more fragmented and chaotic. The sounds here are jagged and abrasive, like petals torn from a flower, yet there’s still a sense of fragility that makes the track impossible to turn away from. It’s as if øjeRum is challenging you to find beauty in the brokenness, to see the flower even as it wilts.
The album closes with “A Shiver in the Reeds”, a track that feels like the calm after a storm. The sounds here are more subdued, more reflective, but there’s still a tension that lingers, a sense that something has been lost. The track is a fitting end to an album that’s all about contrasts — tranquility and unrest, organic and artificial, beauty and decay. It leaves you with more questions than answers, but maybe that’s the point. In a world where everything is so neatly categorized, “Cut Paper Flowers” is a reminder that some things are better left undefined.
Comparisons to other LINE artists like William Basinski and Triac are inevitable, but øjeRum’s work feels more visceral, more grounded in the physical world. There’s a tactile quality to his music, as if you can almost reach out and touch the sounds, feel the paper petals crumbling between your fingers. It’s music that’s meant to be experienced, not just heard—a sonic journey through a garden that’s both real and imagined, where the flowers are made of organs and paper, and the air is thick with the hum of sine waves.
In “Cut Paper Flowers”, øjeRum has created an album that’s as enigmatic as it is beautiful, a work of art that challenges you to look beyond the surface and find the hidden meanings within. It’s an album that lingers long after the last note has faded, like the scent of flowers in a garden that you can never quite find your way back to.
—chaindlk.com
Anyone familiar with the work of the enigmatic Danish musician and artist øjeRum, aka Paw Grabowski, knows of the deep and dreamlike auras he conjures with his prodigious output of music – and the arresting cover art he creates.
Using Victorian-era engravings selected from illustrated novels as well as medical and botanical reference books (think Henry Vandyke Carter illustrations for Grey’s Anatomy or Pierre-Joseph Redouté), øjeRum creates evocative Max Ernst – style collages that become startling, sometimes tormented, sometime ecstatic portraits and tableaux. When he combines them with the searching, otherworldly nature of his music, the results are mesmerizing. His latest album, Cut Paper Flowers, released on Richard Chartier’s LINE label, is a spellbinding addition to his body of work.
Starting with the idea of an imaginary garden, øjeRum draws in the listener with “Coreless Whisper.” Tremulous, ascending high notes on a piano, repeating in a tenuous cycle, mark a trail through a sentient atmosphere that pulses with sighs and gently heaving pads. Occasional wooden ticks and clacks suggest a human presence, but the atmosphere is undercut by random muted growls that indicate otherwise. As the piano notes fade, what sounds like a pedal steel guitar takes over while empty spaces between notes grow and thicken until the listener is left immersed in the silence of new territory.
The two lengthy central tracks, averaging about 16 minutes each, leave acoustic instrumentation altogether and plunge into richly textured, lushly electronic environments.
“Sine Garden” is a lowkey, nocturnal drift through a Rousseau-esque jungle soundscape of thick bass throbs melding with slumbering pads and sedated insect calls, while overhead, brief, high-pitched, glinting tones provide the scantest starlight illumination. The track fairly drips with humidity and the heady scent of night blooms, but nothing in its languorous unfurling feels oppressive or cloying – an indication of øjeRum’s multivalent skills.
Occupying a kind of xerothermic opposition, “Wound Flower” feels stripped down, arid, and sunbaked. With its layered, trebly, piping tones seared of any bass-heavy moisture so that they hover and waft and shine, it’s the soundtrack to the slow passage of the sun, radiating light and heat, as it passes over a glittering landscape.
Cut Paper Flowers closes with “A Shiver in the Reeds,” bringing with it a feeling of having come full circle. Like the opening track, it conjures an atmosphere through the layering of pulsing pads. But those same wooden clacks are more pronounced here, the muted growls now feel closer, yet more strenuous, more pained, and a mysterious rising whistle sounds repeatedly in the distance. As the track proceeds, the pads turn to synth horns and the whole thing slowly takes on a feeling of “Taps” being played at the end of a day. It’s an emotionally complex piece, something mournful and reflective that gracefully avoids tipping into despair, and an exquisite finish to an album that expands and extends øjeRum’s beguiling vision.
—acloserlisten.com
