Mirna’s Fling is the solo project of Dutch musician Arjan Hoekstra (The Good Hand, Alvenrad) and For The Love Of Me is the first record published by the small but qualitative Trollmusic. If I were to begin to list all the influences, references, combinations that triggers the listening to this work I would reduce to list a dry list of artists more or less known, so for the occasion I will just say that, to give you an idea of what you should expect in approaching this disc, it’s enough to think of anyone, in the last thirty years, who has been able to move you only with their voice accompanied by an acoustic guitar, piano and some other non-electric instrument wisely and soberly placed inside the single tracks. Whatever name came to mind at first, you will certainly find it among the notes of this collection, whether they are enclosed in songs from dark shades, reminiscences of neo folk or simple ballads: the voice of Arjan takes us to pleasantly walk in a world of soft colors but invariably tending to coat a cloak of gray, given the mood that pervades the melancholy episodes deceptively more carefree. The production of Markus Stock (Empyrium, The Vision Bleak) maximizes the eleven pearls bestowed by Hoekstra, in the face of a compositional structure seemingly simple that, on the contrary, contains several steps rich in functional details to the yield so far that a recording would not optimal ended up hiding. Misery, Goodbye, Winter’s Breeze and the absolute masterpiece World of Make Believe are just the peaks of a work that knows no decline and that whispers to the soul of each leaving her inheritance more than one wound, although the weapons used appear not very sharp. After all, “what happens to your soul when a relationship has caused destruction and despair for too long“? This is what Arjan Hoekstra asks us in the introduction notes; I don’t have a real answer to this question, for sure For The Love Of Me comes to spread salt where there have already been frequent lacerations. Against all odds I’m literally consuming this record, which in some ways gives me a sense of melancholic bewilderment more irremediable than many albums of my beloved doom.

“Melancholy is not a sickness”

2014 – Trollmusic