Tor Lundvall’s name has been a bit of a buzz in the ambient community recently. Contrary to what you may expect, he’s not living in Scandinavia but in New York. And he’s not only a musician but also a painter, as can be seen on his website http://www.torlundvall.com/.
His style is quite distinct: he calls it ‘ghost ambient’ himself (which may be an explanation of the fact that his name is somewhat related to the ‘gothic’ genre), and it differs from most other ambient in that his voice plays a very important role in all compositions. As well as unique, this also is the weak point, because his voice is not the strongest I have heard. But luckily, Empty City is different from all previous releases (not that they were bad, but the vocal parts somewhat irritated me for their ‘new agey’ sound). On ‘Empty City’, Lundvall’s voice is used as an instrument, and this greatly enhances the emotional depth of the music. In other words: Empty City is a wonderful release…judge for yourself.