"I Am The Fire" är inspelad nattetid framför datorn i Nordwalls hem under 2005 och 2006. Det hörs. När han tämjer elden råder något som kan liknas nattlig stillhet. De elektroniska ljuden förs fram med minimalistisk känslighet och svävar mellan det vackra och skrämmade. I den 17 minuter långa "To make exact copies of every mistake ever made" ältas misstagen om och om igen. Förändringarna i de långa pulserande ljuden är minimala. Lika ofrånkomligt som ältandet är, lika långt från lösningen är vi.
På två av albumets sex spår befriar Nordwall elden inom sig. "The Cranium" formligen beskjuts av elektriska fält. Inre spänningar möter yttre och det är märkligt att skallen inte formligen exploderar. I "The Declaraaation Of Indeeependence" får han hjälp av Leif Elggrens deformerade röst som likt en diktator slungar ut slagorden ur en aldrig sinande källa. Utan framgång försöker jag höra tydbara ord, men det är endast en mycket obehagligt krypande känsla som tränger fram. Ett brandtal. Av vem? För vem? I vilket sammanhang? Med vilket budskap? Att inte veta skapar intressanta spänningar.
"I Am The Fire" är en mycket bra skiva i strömmen av utgåvor med musik skapad av pulserande elektroniska ljud. Engagerat, tankvärt och på ett intelligent sätt, en lek med elden utan att förnimmelser av lukten av svedd hud fyller rummet.
En rolig detalj i låtarna av mer mörk pulserande karaktär är att musiken några gånger landar i en stämning av new age. Men utan att för den skull hamna i den meningslöshet jag förknippar med denna ambienta musikform.
Magnus Olsson, Sound of Music (SWE), www.soundofmusic.nu

Rarefied ambient-style elaborations, sensible dissonances and dreaming, minimal atmospheres. Six tracks selected by Joachim Nordwall, sound artist from Gothenburg (Sweden) that debuts with the moniker 'The Idealist', feeding dilated scans and uneasy frequencies, not unrelated to space-noise involvements and rock retro-actions (including My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized source of inspiration). Drones with comteplative yet crusty attitudes, unresolved harmonies, resonances, unions of organic and synthetic elements inserted in small and ephemeral audio disturbances.
Aurelio Cianciotta, www.neural.it

Gothenburg, Sweden resident Joachim Nordwall may be known to some through his membership in Alvars Orkester and The Skull Defekts but his solo debut under The Idealist guise, I Am The Fire, captures an entirely different yet equally compelling style. Its six electronic tracks straddle meditative ambient and industrial drone, the combination of which makes for a subtly unnerving listening experience, akin to being strapped into a chair and therefore helpless to do anything but watch while a centipede scuttles across one's arm. The framing pieces, "The Knives Are My Eyes" and "My Head Is On Fire" exemplify that quality by being simultaneously placid and unsettling.
Elsewhere, the disc offers extremes. The eighteen-minute "To Make Exact Copies Of Every Mistake Ever Made" is, in some respects, a microsound excursion as minute sounds grow in volume subtly, though it's hard to characterize it as such when its reverberantly droning nucleus swells so imposingly throughout; Nordwall shapes the material with such restraint, the appearance of a soft tone twelve minutes in assumes a significance it would hardly have in a less obsessively controlled setting. "The Cranium" a seething and blistered swirl of atmospheric noise, is considerably more aggressive though it never reaches the ear-shredding pitch one associates with Merzbow and Pita, and it may be that the heavily-distorted speaking voice in "The Declaraaation of Indeeependence" is, in fact, reciting the titular text but it's hard to tell when the voice is so mangled; regardless, it resembles the sound of Nordwall dragging a razor blade across the speaker's vocal cords and transmitting the operation via intercom. I Am The Fire is disquieting material (best appreciated as a headphones listen) but captivating nonetheless.
Textura (USA), www.textura.org

Premier enregistrement de The Idealist - en vérité Joachim Nordwall -, I Am The Fire explique en six phases les tenants et les aboutissants d´un dérapage vers le Nord d´une musique atmosphérique et bruitiste. Amateur de drones chargés, Nordwall combine des oscillations changeantes et des nappes denses d´éléments rêches, passant au tamis des influences allant de My Bloody Valentine à Fennesz (The Knives Are My Eyes), quitte, parfois, à les exposer trop longuement (To Make Exact Copy Of Every Mistake Ever Made). Mais lorsqu´il agrémente son propos de touches qui, à défaut d´être originales, sont élaborées singulièrement - grésillements, effets de masses et fulgurances échappées du jeu auquel il s´adonne derrière un pod -, Nordwall se sort plutôt bien de l´impasse que constitue l´hommage timide aux maîtres (The Cranium). Altérant même volontairement son propos au moyen de traitements dévastateurs : discours attaqué par le grain (The Declaaaration of Indeeependence) ou accrocs appuyant encore la lente dépression jouissive qu´est My Head Is On Fire. Sorti grandi de l´expérience et des nécessités d´un premier album, ne reste plus à The Idealist quà confirmer.
- Chroniqué par Grisli, www.dmute.net

The first album proper from Swedish drone technichian Joachim Nordwall (aka The Idealist) was some years in gestation and at least a year or so in recording. To the sceptic this might seem extraordinary, as sections of "To Make Exact Copies Of Every Mistake Ever Made", which opens with a lengthy intro of heavy generator buzz, don't sound like they necessarily required the presence of their instigator in the studio. However, these tracks draw on the ancient powers of the drone. They take a slow hold, darkly swaddling the listener and inducing, if not actually a meditative state, a very plausible depiction of one. Opener "The Knives Are My Eyes" writhes like jet black lava, more like a living thing than an electronic creation. "I Am Not Here" adds to the sense of a real, organic presence struggling to find expression within the 'mute' context of the synthesizer. "The Cranium" is a rude, frontal awakening, all treble crackle, rearing up then ebbing away. "The Declaraaation Of Indeeependence" could be a political statement of sorts, as the garbled, filtered voice of Leif Elggren jabbers the offending document with a sort of shrill complacency, oblivious to the vortex of noise in which it has become swallowed up. A piece of electronic satire on US foreign policy, perhaps? Deceptive in what what could superficially be taken as droney sameyness, "I Am The Fire" is a rich and rewarding study of the interior life.
- David Stubbs, THE WIRE DECEMBER 2006.

4/5 Elektroniskt/drone.
Joachim Nordwalls (The Skull Defekts, Alvars Orkester, Ideal m.m.) första soloplatta är extremt konsekvent. Sex ljudskulpturer som vibrerar inne i en glödande ugn. Han sjunker ner djupt i drone, klanger och rytmer som rör sig sakta, knappt märkbara frekvenser, musiken kan vara tyst och sökande, men samtidigt fysisk och personlig. Effekten är allra starkast i låtarna som sträcker ut sig i över 10 minuter. Och The Declaraaation of Indepeeendence (med Leif Elggrens röst som motor) får det att spinna ordentligt i skallen.
PM JÖNSSON, GP 22 November 2006.

Joachim Nordwall was born in 1975 and started playing music in 1987 as the Alvers Orkester, so then he was thirteen... His releases were on the Swedish Börft label (and in 2006 they even had a great album on Ash International, see Vital Weekly 512). From 1998 to 2005 he was a member of Kid Commando, 'an avant punk rock trio' and also in 1998 he started the iDEAL organisation, responsible for some fine releases and a festival. As The Idealist he plays solo music, and so strangely enough 'I Am The Fire' is his debut CD. I imagine that if you play this ultra soft, it would be indeed ambient music, but the atmospherics captured by Nordwall are all together of a much different kind. It's as beautiful as it also painful, at the same time. Powerful drone music that won't lull the listener into a deep sleep, but make the hairs on your back rise up. Intense music that defies genres, belonging partly to industrial music and partly drone/ambient, but is just right on.
FdW - Vital Weekly 548