"Linus Hillborg’s solo debut lures listeners through despaired soundscapes of justly tuned electroacoustic orchestral arrangements seeped in rich harmonic synthesis.

Magelungsverket is a rendering of materials from one of Hillborg’s technology repurposing projects, Orphan Works, where an obsolete game engine was modified to create an interactive installation in which participants drive through a fractured manifestation of Stockholm. Displaced, uncanny narratives and depictions of both real and semi-fictional locations in Stockholm that could have existed — but do not — and the spaces that end up in between, procures distinct sequences of sound constructed with the Buchla 200 system, programmed synthesis, bowed cymbals, metal clarinet, and tape machines.

The rendered pieces on Magelungsverket have been adapted from Orphan Works’ interactive and generative material into separate, fixed compositions, bound by duration, each one named after a location in this fictional, virtual Stockholm. For instance, Vårbergsobservatoriet (The Vårberg Observatory), draws its name from an artificial mountain that exists in the outskirts of Stockholm, amidst the sprawl of residential areas far beyond the sparkling city center. It was built from garbage scraps left behind after the underground metro system was constructed in the 1970s. In this fictional version, a public observatory was wishfully imagined to have been built on top of it. However fictitious Hillborg has imagined these locations, it is a bittersweet reflection and fragmented mental image of a Stockholm that never existed."

Moloton, 2021