Johnny!
Only Love

This album is an assemblage……glimpses of tradition…reflections on our collective present…luminous echoes between love and solitude.hope and absurdity.euphoria and mourning.This album grapples with and transgresses these binaries because we have/and continue to cross borders. Yet, for us, the border is no metaphor—too much real staring back at us.We embody the border.We (our families) have crossed it.We (our stories) are coated with its residues.And so… we cross the border of self through our art—out of necessity.This album was imagined while touring the country as families were corralled in cages.We then fled the wildfire of a nascent pandemic poised to (especially) ravage our communities as we recorded in Los Angeles.And our sonic journey concluded in Chicago while the country rebelled against the murderous consequences of policing in the U.S.Through this cascade of tipping points and tragedy, we summoned melody and verse to sound out verdant technicolor dreams of freedom and desire, mirroring the vortex of our time.And borders were at the center of these struggles.Borders—of nation, of belonging—are the struggle.And so, this album is a set of dispatches from that wondrous journey……our journey across and into a sunburst surreal.…our astral meditations on loss and triumph.…our sonic trek across a landscape of trauma and effervescence.…The border divides and defines places—yes. But it is equally a place unto itself—a borderland.It is the forbidden place where we dwell.The enchanting space where we are at home.The bustling city where we reflect.Look into our mirror. See us in you.

Release date: June 11, 2021Throughout human history, we have depicted the world we live in through art. By reworking what we see in the world, the simplest things have helped us understand the beauty of nature and to evaluate the material world that we have created around us, as a window to a constantly changing reality, through our own perception. It is that absolute reality that appears in the seam of human and nature and that can be revealed through art.Still life painting, also referred to as natura morta (”dead nature”) in Italian, stretches back to ancient times. Some of the earliest works, found in Pompeii, depict commonplace objects such as fresh autumn fruits alongside man-made objects such as a small amphora and a small terracotta heap with dried fruits. These two thousand year old paintings give a snapshot of Roman life, and also creates a link to time and space. A slice of life has been created by binding the earth’s pigments with extracts of oil, made from nuts and seeds, painted with brushes, made from a variety of fibers, such as trees and hair from animals. While life wanes with each brush stroke, by shifting reality into past, art exists to make us come alive, being a living image of a dead thing, a surface and a symbol with symbolic powers of its own. Still life works celebrate material and ephemeral pleasures by returning to nature as the ultimate source for our standards in art as well as in life itself.Natura Morta collects pieces from a continuous variety of melodies — supported by a decisive rhythm section — creating a musical kaleidoscope of ever-changing colors. Sven Wunder brings life into this rich assortment of musical implications by fusing and combining melodic instruments with each other in a setting that spans from a classical to a modern idiom. The author evokes this panoramic portrait by articulating an instrumental dialog between a chamber orchestra and a jazz ensemble. The result is a musical celebration of material pleasures that also serves as a reminder of the brevity of human life. This album was produced with financial support from the Swedish Arts Council.The staff used on this LP is the following:9 violins, 4 violas, 3 cellos, 1 flute, 1 piano, 1 electric piano, 1 cembalo, 1 twelve-string guitar, 1 electric guitar, 1 trumpet, 1 flugelhorn, 1 tenor horn, 1 marimba, 1 electric bass, drums and percussions.