David
Elfström Lilja
Constantly Melancholic
Fourteen piano pieces, written and recorded across a single year. One instrument, close and unadorned.
Constantly Melancholic
A piece every other week through 2026, each one a small entry in the same quiet notebook. On 2 October the fourteen are gathered into a single album.
About
Photo: Micke Sandström
David Elfström Lilja is a Swedish pianist, composer and producer based in Gävle. Constantly Melancholic is his first body of work written for the piano alone: fourteen short pieces, recorded close to the instrument, with nothing added and nothing hidden.
The piano project sits quietly beside a wider practice. Under the names Árstraumur and Moist, and through his label I/O Music, he has spent years writing and producing ambient, electronic and cinematic sound. Here he sets all of that aside and returns to a single instrument and a single take.
Written over the course of 2026 and released one piece at a time, the music reads like a diary kept in sound: unhurried, plain-spoken, and content to let silence carry as much weight as any note. The series appears on Nordic Static, an imprint of I/O Music, and is gathered into a full album on 2 October 2026.
