Search - Erik Wollo :: Airborne

"Erik Wollo manages to synthesize influences from Tangerine Dream and Pink Floyd to Steve Reich and modern electronica. But as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary instrumental music, he s truly morphed these sounds into a image-evoking modality that is wholly his own." - John Diliberto/Echoes Radio

On his 16th solo album, Airborne, Norwegian guitarist/synthesist Erik Wollo's unique musical imagination creates passionate and reflective electronic/ambient passages that bridge his melodic moving musicality with tranquil atmospheric altitudes. The album's twelve sculptured compositions reveal a fine eye for form and detail with smooth and gentle flights through intriguing and sensitive environments. This is a musical voyage conjuring images of floating horizons and new unexplored worlds.

Erik says, "Imagine you are sitting on an airplane. The power of the engine moves you forward over the landscape and everything you know passes below. You have the perfect overview; you see your life and your existence more clearly, with a continuous flow of thoughts. The journey becomes more of a travel in psychic time, rather than just taking you from place A to B, using hours and minutes. I explored this sense of an Airborne feeling while working on these tracks. It's music that is both adventurous and uplifting."

After his successful Gateway release (PRO244, 2010), Erik takes things to a more introspective height offering a grand breathing space of expansive warm electronics and sparkling guitars. At the same time, electronic beats course in and out of the tracks with a potent mix of melodic electric guitar weaving through the electronic sequencer grooves on tracks such as "Airborne 2," "North of the Mountain" and "Time River." There are also wonderful forays into ambient soundscapes on beatless songs like "Lost and Found," The Longest Day and "Airborne 3," with a hazy flow of guitars, layered swirling synths and vivid airy effects. This is new age music that plunges the listener into an exotic dream, gently guiding the emotions via the masterfully conceived flow of the material.

"A blend of light and dark, alien and familiar. Flowing ambient sounds are punctuated by moments of drama and rhythmic intensity, melding the ambient, electronica, and progressive fusion genres." - Bill Binkelman/New Age Retailer.

Erik's two milestone collaborative albums with Steve Roach - Stream of Thought (PRO224, 2009) and The Road Eternal (PRO259, 2011) - influenced his musical path on Airborne, inspiring the exploration of the terrain between melodic electronic and modern minimalism.

For all lovers of evocative, floating ambience and lush electronic sound painting, Airborne represents an inviting musical journey. The lavish layered soundscapes take the listener to ethereal and soaring heights that produce textural vistas of delicate grandeur and shimmering eternal elegance.