10 Seconds: Rebecka Edlund

"Music is a moment in time, memories captured. When revisiting a piece of music that has had an impact on us, we only need to hear a few seconds to be transported right back to the place and time in which the music truly meant something and perhaps, was most needed." - Rebecka Edlund

1. Kenny Wheeler - Part 1 Opening (1'04" - 1'14")

From Kenny Wheeler - Music for Large & Small Ensembles (1990)

"I am on a train going south, leaving the north behind me, watching an endless supply of pine trees passing me by, taking no notice of my heartbreak – my first heartbreak actually. Just like the rest of the world, these forests are speeding by and I am moving in slow motion, unable to catch up. Time has left me behind, just like I left that love of mine.

It is unimaginable for this feeling to ever leave my body, in a way that makes me fear the very prospect of it being gone. As if I’ve become one with the pain and that I would be gone too if it was taken away from me.

Ten seconds of Kenny Wheeler’s healing ’Opening’ tells me that I am ever changing, ever growing and so is love."

2. Valkyrien Allstars - jeg lover deg (2'25" - 2'35")

From Valkyrien Allstars - prøv å si noe til meg nå (2016)

"I am back in the big city. There’s no time for heartbreaks here, the only way to get anywhere is to push through the noise. The Northern Line is too loud to be listening to something new, this song I know inside out so I just leave it on repeat until I get off the tube. And maybe then my lungs will remember how to breathe properly again."

3. Badi Assad - Vrap (2'24" - 2'34")

From Badi Assad DVD (2012)

"Autumn gusts dry my clean sheets and fill our garden with smouldering leaves. So far, it’s a Sunday well spent, a groovy t-shirt and pants kind of morning. Me, myself and my new flame Badi Assad. I inhale her rhythms and percussive sounds, they sweep the dusty corners and fill the vacuum in my heart."

4. Lars Danielsson & Mathias Eick - II Blå (1'58" - 2'08")

From Lars Danielsson - Liberetto II (2014)

“Moving on has never been easy for me. Don’t ask me why, but I tend to hold on to things for as long as I can.

This song is all about revisiting the past. When I moved from home, I moved up north to a little town called Falun. The attic of a yellow house right by the river became my safe haven. The mere mention of ’II Blå’ takes me back there – the loft with green wallpaper and wooden floorboards, a red velvet sofa and a sweetheart plant swinging from the ceiling. But ten seconds is all I get and now, it’s time to move on. Look, this is me letting go."

5. Lauren Newton - Talking Stones (1'22" - 1'32")

From Joachim Gies / Lauren Newton – Tenderness Of Stones (2007)

"The distastefully bright red walls of the practice room; the prickling smells of spring time gently blowing in through the open window; the sound of children playing catch on the lawn outside and the persistent oboist shredding next door – the conspicuous reality of this April afternoon is quickly withdrawn from my consciousness as I press play.

I am inside a mountain, listening spellbound to moss covered stones having a conversation, calmly breathing in the occasional beam of light piercing through the otherwise cold, damp cave walls.

That is what happened when I first heard the voice of Lauren Newton, absorbed by her extensive use of vocal fry, her slow pace and fierce expression, grounded and soaring at the same time."

6. Eva Rune - Vallmusik kring Stångtjärn (18'04" - 18'14")

From Musica Sveciae: Folk Music in Sweden: Lockrop & vallåtar (1995)

"We are sat where the trees meet the water. The evening air is a bit chilly, but it’s that time of year when we’re not wearing shoes or jackets out of principle, more than anything. The country that we’re from is home to over a 100 000 lakes, Stångtjärn is one of them.

On a still summer evening in 1995, six folk musicians gather around Stångtjärn to breathe life into ancient Swedish pastoral melodies. Their herding calls soar across the surface, carried by the natural acoustics of the lake."

7. Snowpoet aka Lauren Kinsella - A Chance to Hear the Rain (0'46" - 0'56")

From Snowpoet - Wait For Me (2021)

"I think I’m in the beginning of a new chapter. I still need to cry now and then, but with a carefully reassuring feeling of hope, I am slowly reclaiming a space within myself that I thought would be gone forever.

And maybe I could even welcome someone else into that space of mine one day, maybe even one day soon, because the more time I spend with Snowpoet the more I realise that we human beings have this great ability – we can love again. And maybe I already do. If this is what city life tastes like, I might as well keep nibbling.

And I might as well stand outside my front door for a little while longer, holding on to the keys in my pocket, the promising prospect of a warm bed just a few steps away. It ended up being a night bus kind of evening. I’m beyond tired, but also happier than I’ve been in a long time. Happy and safe, so why not linger? Backed by the brick wall of the house I call home, I rest my eyes on the reflection of golden street lights in wet asphalt. I might as well give myself a chance to hear the rain."

8. Goodland Trio - Falun (0'52" - 1'02")

From Goodland Trio - Skogen I Staden (2014)

"I used to think I’d never be able to listen to this song without crying. I still can’t, but now those tears are accompanied by a big smile and the inability to stop dancing. Falun, in the yellow house by the river, is where I found love – my first love actually. But not my last."

9. Allegra Krieger - The Circumstances (2'10" - 2'20")

From Allegra Krieger - Precious Thing (2022)

" I am right here":

There is a slight heavenly way the smog and the light meet to make morning

And slip through the windows of our bedroom

These days I wake lying at your side, where I'm afraid of moving at all

Embracing the lack of control over the circumstance of loving you

I go downstairs to make some coffee, sit in a chair, find something to read

I could live for smaller things if I had to

For everything is precariously waiting to fall or to fly

As the time goes by I pour some milk and watch it rise into a plume of white

There is a slight heavenly way, the wrong and the right meet to make meaning

We balance on the breaking off and building on

And you come downstairs to make some breakfast

I wonder where you went in your sleep

embracing the lack of control over the circumstance of loving you

Lyrics: Allegra Krieger

10.  Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1'08" - 1'18")

From Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975)

"As I am writing this for all you music lovers to read, it is once again summer in the city and the lawns are hissing. Maybe this is the song that will carry my present into the future. If I got to choose, this would be the lady’s choice. This moment in time, captured in 10 seconds of Joni Mitchell."