Donner - 2021 - Hesitant Light

(40:41; Apollon Records)

Track list:
1. Melancholy City 4:03
2. Hesitant Light 3:01
3. Dance of the Swallows 4:50
4. Night by Night 4:45
5. Floating World 5:05
6. Street Heat 3:09
7. Andromeda Waltz 2:51
8. Escape from Plague City 5:32
9. Devil's Highway 5:51
10. Coda:Street Haze 1:34

Line-up:
Jacob Holm-Lupo - keyboards,m synthesizers, guitars, programming, samples, loops, percussion
with:
Keith Carlock - drums
Georg Wadenius - guitars
Marte Eberson - vocals
Hedvig Mollestad - guitars
Nikolai Haengsle Eilertsen - bass
Brynjar Dambo - synthesizers
Bill Bressler - synthesizers
Kristoffer Momrak - flute
Ivar Winther - synthesizers


Prolusion.
Norwegian project Donner is one of the many side projects of White Willow main man Jacob Holm-Lupo, and this one has more of an emphasis on the electronic aspects of the music universe. "Hesitant Light" is the first full length album created under this moniker, and was released through Norwegian label Apollon Records in the fall of 2021.

Analysis.
Those who expect this latest side project by Holm-Lupo to be a clear cut progressive venture will probably find this production disappointing, as this production veers off into quite a few different directions. It is a diverse collection of songs with some common denominators, and the word electronic is certainly one of them, but it is not a purebred progressive oriented affair as such.

Opening cut 'Melancholy City' is a number that will resonate a bit with those who have an interest in many of the German purveyors of electronic progressive music though, and on a few other occasions material does appear here that to a lesser or greater degree comes with similar associations.

We also get a few hjelpings of material that has more of a jazzrock and fusion touch to them though, playful and elegant affairs where the guitar is a bit more prominent, and perhaps even more central to this as an album experience are the many songs that has something of a movie score quality to them. Of which at least one gave me ever so slight associations towards a band like Tangerine Dream and the movie related music they used to create back in the day.

A bit more on the left side of matters there's also a song here that wouldn't have been out of place on one of the albums by Austrian ambient maestro Gandalf, and we also get a little helping of what I'd describe as synth pop here with 'Night by Night', a song that also feature some fine lead vocals.

I also note that quite a few of the songs had something of an 80's feel to them. If that is due to mix, production or instrumentation I can't really tell, nor if this aspect is a planned one or an accidental one. It is present though, and presumably this detail will make this album perhaps a bit more interesting to inspect for men of a certain age.

Conclusion.
"Hesitant Light" is a production that explores quite a few varieties of electronic music with a foundation inside as well as outside of a progressive rock and progressive music oriented direction. For my sake I'd say that those who tend to enjoy electronic movie score music just as much as progressive electronic music may well be the audience that will find this album to be most interesting, and then perhaps in particular those who had their formative years in the 1980's.

Olav M. Björnsen, November 2021

Links:
https://www.facebook.com/donnernorway
https://www.apollonrecords.no/