It can sometimes be quite difficult to instantly connect with an artist or piece of music, probably due the sheer volume of music I listen to on a daily basis. Sometimes I hear a band once and it does pretty much nothing for me; I cast it aside and it becomes lodged in the 'pending' tray of my psyche; I need more than just a gentle reminder in order to recall them. Other times I can pick up on something special that takes my fancy; I give it a few more listens and it floats around for a while and occasionally drifts into view with a nostalgic presence. Then there's Einar Stray. It's all I have listened to for the last few days. That pile of ‘other music’ is growing and well, I don’t care. They can wait; I’m in love with this album and the man is a musical genius; there, I said it. No going back now.

The album kicks off with the title track Chiaroscuro; a trill piano with accompanying violin meanders into a steady, hammered chord progression. This is when my pilomotor reflex takes over my entire body, and then the vocal starts, holy shit... I'm being born again. So that’s the first song then. The album continues to amaze and tantalize all the senses, a vocal duet between Einar and Hanna Furuseth being the focal point of ‘Yr Heart isn’t a Heart.’ I always love when a band join two of their songs together by overlapping the ending of one song into the intro of the next. The beat at the end of ‘Arrows’ begins the transition into ‘We Were the Core Seeds’, joined swiftly by plucked violin strings; it reminds me a little of some Pink Panther-esque robbery soundtrack. 'Beast' ends intriguingly, with the sound of a tape recorder being rewound and played at various points; the overlying marriage of piano and trumpet gives the song a very appealing timbre.

Chiaroscuro closes with 'Teppet Faller', one of my personal favorites. It starts off really slowly, with what sounds like some old speech recorded from the TV babbling away under the now distinct sound in his piano melody. A false crescendo of strings brings on the first rise of the song. After briefly fading again back to the sparse piano, a bass rumble heralds the second rise in this paradisiacal closing track, only to be smashed hard in the face with one of the best climaxes to any song, ever.

The multi-instrumental compositions of this 20-year-old Norwegian aren't restricted to any single genre; they bleed through into the end zones of many. Through fear of this review sounding pretty much like a love letter, I tried my hardest to pull Chiaroscuro apart on several occasions, trying to find even the slightest little thing that I could write that would make it sound like I wasn’t totally biased.  I failed. Get this album in your life.