Artist: Rotem Geffen
Title: The Night is the Night
Label: Thanatosis Production
Cat nr: THT31LP
Format: Vinyl 12″
Style: Jazz/Ballad/Free improvisation
Tracklist:
| 1 | The Night is the Night | 4:14 | |
| 2 | Tachzeri Elay | 3:52 | |
| 3 | River | 2:55 | |
| 4 | I always know | 4:28 | |
| 5 | Ich vermisse dich | 4:43 | |
| 6 | I’m Allowed to Love You | 3:35 | |
| 7 | I Beg | 7:52 | |
| 8 | Hide | 9:53 |
Produced by Nelly Klayman-Cohen & Alex Zethson.
Music and lyrics* by Nelly Klayman-Cohen.
Recorded by Norbert Lukacs at Matti Bye’s Studio Barnängen, Stockholm, April 9-11, 2023. Additional recordings by Anton Toorell and Simon Caringer, at Mälarhöjden Social Club. Henrik Olsson recorded his parts at Täcklebo Musikakademi.
Hohner Bass 3 parts recorded by Alex Zethson in the basement of Studio Dubious, Stockholm. Mixed and co-produced by Anton Toorell.
Mastered by Jonas Sioström, Dynamic Audio.
Cover photo by John Hertzberg (Helmer Bäckströms arkiv / Tekniska Museet).
Design by Michell Zethson, finalised by Pål Olofsson.
Executive production by Alex Zethson.
* Some lyrics contain quotes from Paul Celan, Else Lasker-Schüler and Clarice Lispector. Track 1 – ‘The Night is the Night’ – is a dialogue with and a poem by Paul Celan
Nelly Klayman-Cohen is a singer, pianist, composer, and lyricist performing under the moniker Rotem Geffen. The album The Night is the Night consists of eight newly written songs and follows her critically acclaimed debut album, You Guard the Key (Zeon Light 2021). The lyrics, written in German, English, and Hebrew, delve into memory, love, sorrow, and the poetics of the night. The “I” and the “You” merge as relational organisms, their boundaries continuously shifting, blurring, and being redefined in their encounter with each other. Together, the songs form a cohesive, multilingual dialogue. On the album, she collaborated with producer Alex Zethson (keyboardist with Angles, Tropiques, Vathres, Fire! Orchestra, Sven Wunder, Mariam the Believer) and co-producer and mixing engineer Anton Toorell (Dammit I’m Mad, Invader Ace, Receptacles, The Ägg). The result is an album with varied and dynamic instrumentation, where the songs are imbued with a naïve shimmer that is balanced by darkness, depth, and subtle intensity – in both lyrics and music.
The album will be released on Thanatosis produktion, a Stockholm-based label with international distribution, whose intention is to primarily release music from the Swedish, alternative music scene.
Anyone who has heard Rotem Geffen – or Nelly Klayman-Cohen as she is named – live or on record knows that she has a unique ability to create a room that vibrates. Coupled with the piano and with her voice, her presence affects you, drawing your attention and making you want to listen. Rotem Geffen’s music has the unique quality of an art that must exist, music that was absolutely necessary to create, that must be given sonic form. It is music that springs from a practice where there are no boundaries between life and art, where everything is intertwined. The songs contain both rawness and lightness. Through the unique artistic talent Rotem Geffen expresses, there are streaks of naivety. It is as if she continuously asks: How simple can something be that is simultaneously a matter of life and death? The music is directed upwards, towards the light, but also downwards towards pain and darkness. It dwells on both birth and death. Rotem Geffen sings to a you that is everywhere and nowhere; a you that is not one you but many; a you that is gone, the same you that is here forever. The ‘I’ and the ‘you’ are drawn as relational organisms, with boundaries that are continuously shifting, blurring, and being redrawn.
The interfaces are sometimes brutal. Rotem Geffen can address her singing to a (dead) loved one, and then suddenly turn to a (living) lover. It is about love and bodies, dreams and memories. The enigma runs like an undercurrent beneath the clarity. Flowers meet stones, and yes, the stones can bloom: as the Jewish poet Paul Celan writes in his poem Corona: “It is time for the stone to bloom!”. There’s the flower that grows from the throat, the stone that forgets its color, the greatest garden that grows from a wound. As a listener, one is simultaneously directed towards what is growing, the corporeal and the carnal – and towards the intangible, the elusive, the hidden light beyond. An example of this can be found in the voice-violin duo “River”, where a quiet voice speaks: “Huge stars above the raindrops running down from the big dark sky”.
On this album, the night appears as a vibrating space, inhabited by phrases, bodies, melodies and sounds. The night is both the space of endless despair and endless love. Some songs are like incantations or prayers. Phrases are repeated, and with the repetition something happens: meanings deepen and new nuances emerge. Sometimes the words themselves are banal, but the way Rotem Geffen sings them, the way she shapes and varies them, saturates them with multiple meanings. These musicalized texts creep under our skins, where they settle and live on as elusive fog creatures.
One of the repeated mantras is: I’m Allowed to Love You. And from the sound of a pump organ, a voice sings about the impossible: “You’re so near, as if you weren’t here.” It is as if Rotem Geffen wants to communicate that what love has not received in this world, it will receive in the next. Love seems unattainable but at the same time it is always present, not least in the space of music. That’s where it lives, love.
There is a poetic drive in Rotem Geffen’s artistry that has led her to collaborate as often with writers as with musicians, and for that matter, to have as many admirers in literary circles as in musical ones. With the lyrics on this album, she enters a winding poetic conversation. The songs talk to each other, phrases echo, and fragments reappear in new contexts. But the album’s lyrics also talk to other writers, such as Paul Celan, Clarice Lispector and Else Lasker-Schüler. Celan plays a special role: the title track is based on one of his poems, and based on a perceived kinship with the poet’s writing,several of the songs on the album engage in an intertextual and intimate dialog with his work, not least with the book “Poppy and Memory”.
In August 2022, Nelly sent the title track “The Night is the Night” to musician and producer Alex Zethson, who also runs the record label Thanatosis produktion. This started a conversation, which grew into a collaboration. Klayman-Cohen and Zethson agreed to try to create a sound world that feels timeless: “We wanted to keep the lyrics and the piano at the center, finding a simplicity, with subtle electronic elements,” Nelly says. The songs were recorded during two days in April 2023 at Matti Bye’s studio in Barnängen, Stockholm. A few additions were made later in the spring, and during the summer and early fall of 2023, the album was mixed by co-producer Anton Toorell, who played a significant role in shaping the music.
The dynamic and varied arrangements emerged in a dialogical process between Klayman-Cohen and Zethson, but much was done spontaneously, on location in the rehearsal space or at the studio, together with the musicians Vilhelm Bromander, Milton Öhrström, Isak Hedtjärn, Katt Hernandez, Leo Svensson Sander and Josef Alin. The piano arrangements are made by Nelly, except for “I Beg” where she plays an adaptation of an arrangement made by Zethson. On the same song, Zethson (with some initial input from Vilhelm Bromander) provided the horn arrangement.
The setting varies, but the piano and voice form a common thread. However, on “Ich vermisse dich” the piano sound is abstracted by a heavily muted, felt-covered sound, and on “River” the spoken voice is intertwined with Hernandez’s violin. “I Always Know” is the only song with a clear percussive rhythmic element, created by percussionist and sound artist Henrik Olsson. Unlike on her debut album, the harmonium is a recurring feature of the album’s sound. Another new instrument is the flute. On the album, Isak Hedtjärn (who has been closely involved with Rotem Geffen since she started recording and touring) doesn’t just play clarinet and bass clarinet: on “I Beg” we hear Hedtjärn’s flute and Leo Svensson Sander’s cello swirl upwards, as if entwined in each other…
Thematically, two strands run through the album: one consists of “Tachzeri Elay”, “I Beg” and “Hide”; the other of “I Always Know”, “Ich vermisse dich”, “The Night is the Night”, three songs that are linked by two songs that almost function as bridges: “I’m Allowed to Love You” and “River”.
The songs together form a flowing whole that creates a strong and moving album.
