Nordic music
Kieron Tyler
The voice of Jean-Claude Juncker does not habitually turn up on albums. Jessica Sligter's Polycrisis: yes! though features extracts from a 2010 speech by he, the President of the European Commission on “The Dream has Died” and “The State of the Union”. Furthermore, his concept of a European Solidarity Corps which tasks young volunteers with working in crises – such as the refugee crisis – gives its title to “Solidarity Corps (1)” and “Solidarity Corps (2)”, the latter of which features repetition of the single world “Solidarity.”Juncker is not the only name conjured on Polycrisis: yes! Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Finland’s Teksti-TV 666 set their musical stall with 2016’s 1,2,3 album, which collected the tracks from their three EPs to date. Now, with their first album proper Aidattu Tulevaisuus, the nature of what they are comes into even sharper focus. In essence, they merge the attack of My Bloody Valentine and “Death Valley 69” Sonic Youth with a punk rock urgency and Krautrock motorik drive. However, any bald description of the raw ingredients sells Teksti-TV 666 short.Aidattu Tulevaisuus (roughly translating to “Trust in the Future”) is 31 minutes long and includes five tracks. A six-piece (“ Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Last month, theartsdesk reviewed Skadedyr’s Musikk!, an eccentric album which skipped “through jazz, traditional music, atonal scrapings and wind instrument burblings.” Twelve Norwegian musicians were heard. Amongst them were Fredrik Luhr Dietrichson, Hans Hulbækmo and Anja Lauvdal, all of whom also trade as Moskus. Mirakler, their fourth album as such, isn’t as out there as Musikk! but it’s still an idiosyncratic ride.Double bass (played by Dietrichson), drums (Hulbækmo) and piano (Lauvdal) are Moskus’ core instruments. Hammond organ, a musical saw, various synthesisers and vibes also crop Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
In spirit if not musical style, Musikk! shares chromosomes with late-Sixties ESP-label mavericks like Cro Magnon and Octopus, as well as The Residents of Meet the Residents, early This Heat and the Rock in Opposition collective. Sun Ra is in there too. The non-linear third album from Norway’s Skadedyr skips through jazz, traditional music, atonal scrapings and wind instrument burblings – all during the same piece. Musikk! defies conventions.It is, though, a focused suite of six disciplined compositions which range between just over a minute and close to 12 minutes. The key track is “Festen” Read more ...
Jo Southerd
Sophomore records are never easy, especially when your debut was as acclaimed and beloved as french artist Melody Prochet’s first outing as Melody’s Echo Chamber, and this follow-up has had its fair share of bumps in the road. Prochet first announced Bon Voyage in April last year, on her 30th birthday; a new song was released, and a string of tour dates to go with it. But shortly after, Prochet was hospitalised following a serious accident that left her with broken vertebrae in her neck and spine, and a brain aneurysm. The album and accompanying live shows were put on hold. It’s impossible to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Perfectly Unhappy’s sixth track makes the album’s case. Until this point, Andy Sheppard’s playing has largely gone with the flow; working through and around the melodies pianist Espen Eriksen has composed for his trio’s first recorded collaboration with the British saxophonist. A minute 20 seconds into “Naked Trees”, the double bass comes to the fore. Then, after another 55 seconds, Sheppard begins playing with a free-flowing sinuousness and spontaneity which wasn’t previously apparent. The next two tracks, “Revisited” and the album closer “Home”, are similarly energised.Sheppard and Norway’s Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Exorcism begins with a track titled “Rapin’”. Its lyrics tell of a late night walk home during which the drunk protagonist is sexually assaulted. “Did you pick me because there’s no one else around?” asks Jenny Wilson in an account of her own experience. Two days later she goes to a doctor and, as she puts it, “I had to show my body again”.Tracking the attack and its aftermath, Exorcism is thematically testing. The closest parallel springing to mind is the 1982 single “The Boiler”, by Rhoda with the Special A.K.A. Wilson’s fifth album draws from being raped, the emotional, institutional – Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Fairytales is lovely. It opens with a subtle version of Jimmy Webb’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” which merges Radka Toneff’s emotive and intimate vocal with Steve Dobrogosz’s sparse piano lines. The ingredients are minimal, there is no embellishment yet the performance is powerful.Over the following nine songs, the mood endures. Versions of Elton John’s “Come Down in Time”, Kurt Weill’s “Lost in the Stars”, “My Funny Valentine” and “Nature Boy” sit naturally alongside musical interpretations of Emily Dickinson’s “I Read my Sentence” and the Fran Landesman poems “Before Love Went Out of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Considering the coal-dark nature of her music, it was unsurprising Sweden's Anna von Hausswolff was dressed entirely in black while meeting up at London’s Rough Trade East shop to talk about her new album Dead Magic. Less foreseeable was her sunny disposition and willingness to veer off topic. She happily explored what has brought her to this point and spoke enthusiastically about her inspirations. Whatever was discussed, the overriding impression was of a cheerful but nonetheless serious-minded person who puts a lot of thought into their music.Dead Magic (pictured below) is the Gothenburg- Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although the Hardanger Fiddle is regarded as a traditional Norwegian instrument, its use stretches back to no earlier than the middle of the 17th century. The music players summon from its strings is more easily seen as traditional though: music to dance to. Tuned differently to a standard fiddle, the hardingfele does not have a set amount of strings but instead has four for playing and four or five resonating, sympathetic strings underlying those which are bowed. The baroque viola d'amore, which also has sympathetic strings, is a near relative. Once heard, the keening, resonant power of the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The sensation evoked by Sykli is that it documents a voyage, one beginning with anticipation for what will come and then journeying through diffuse territory which could be an endless, mist-filled valley, anywhere beyond this solar system or within inner space. The mostly instrumental – the only vocals are wordless – album uses repeated guitar and keyboard figures as the basis for five lengthy pieces which openly draw from Philip Glass, Neu and Tangerine Dream. Yet an innate character stands apart from what is recognisable. At its core, Sykli is about intensity.Siinai are Finnish. Half the Read more ...
David Nice
London orchestras do communicate with each other, sometimes at least, when it comes to programming. It can’t have been a coincidence that on Wednesday we had one Finnish chief conductor, Sakari Oramo launching his BBC Symphony Orchestra Sibelius cycle with a searing Fifth Symphony, followed last night by another, Esa-Pekka Salonen at the head of the Philharmonia, with the Sixth and Seventh, each prefaced by new(ish) Icelandic music in a programme which looked on paper even more enticing. Trouble is that while Oramo’s Sibelius really was that rare wonder where passion and precision become one Read more ...