When the world paused in 2021, NilssenLove transformed lockdown into a laboratory. With his cymbals lost in Brazil, he summoned nine Paiste gongs - eight tuned to cosmic frequencies - and retreated to Vanntårnet, an old water tower-turned-gallery just outside Oslo. There, the structure became his amplifier; his body, the instrument’s extension. This is not just music - it’s architecture, seismic waves of sound shaped by human presence.

Recorded by Lasse Marhaug and released four years later in May 2025, the album delivers a raw, physically immersive experience. You hear the artist’s footsteps echo, the room’s resonance breathe. Waves of low-end frequencies roll like tectonic plates, obliterating the divide between performer, instrument, and space.

What stands out is the balance between monolithic sound and delicate color. Interludes of woodblocks, woodblocks, even improvised instruments - shekere, banister, styled props - prevent the gong’s mass from overwhelming. The result is a textured soundscape that's at once primal and meticulous - “cosmic meditation”, one reviewer dubbed it.

The album unfolds in seven movements, the first nearly twenty minutes long, the rest darting in like gusts of wind - an 18:56 opener followed by pieces as short as a minute. It’s a masterclass in restraint: density followed by empty space, tension followed by release. The long opener invites listeners to acclimate, to feel each vibration against their psyche; the shorter pieces punch like sonic haikus - concise, potent, and unpredictable.

NilssenLove’s trajectory - from Kitschy Norse drummer to avant-garde impresario - gives this project philosophical heft. Known for propelling Large Unit and storming freejazz stages, here he drops the rhythms and embraces resonances. Planetary gongs tuned by Hans Gusto, played within a reverberant tower - the conceptual rigor rivals his sonic boldness.

This is also a social document: a solo trek through pandemic solitude, a search for meaning in vibration. The gap between each gong bloom and decay feels like the pause between breaths. You imagine the artist, fifty years old but reborn as a cosmic cartographer, plotting gravity’s curves in sound.

For adventurous ears, this is essential - a bold reimagination of what a solo percussion album can be. It’s not background; it's gravitational pull.

Why you should listen:

Physical immersion: feel the room and the artist’s movement as soundwaves saturate the space.
Dynamic interplay: weighty gong resonance balanced by textural nuance.
Cosmic scale in microcosm: planetary tuning meets personal introspection.
Pandemic-era artistry: solitude redefined as creation, not retreat.

If you’ve ever wondered, "what does silence sound like when it’s built out of gongs?", this is your answer. It resonates in the body, not just the ears.