Voice & Strings & Timpani

Emotionally charged experimentalism.

 

When it comes to art, culture, and especially music, it's said we live in bland and unadventurous times, most often by people who hanker after after a supposed golden age. Anyone with a willingness to listen outside of their own comfort zone will know this is not the case however. Thankfully there are scores of musicians and labels releasing music that's non-conformist, passionate, at times challenging, but that has the all-important ability to move hearts and minds.

One such record label with a consistently high standard is Hubro Records, a record label based in Norway whose back catalogue contains often unclassifiable music that skirts the edges of classical, modern jazz, electronica, folk, and even Sousa, yet belongs to no singular camp. The records Hubro release belong to their own category. Experimental in nature yet highly engaging and always with a deep emotional core.

A recent example is this eponymous long-player by Voices & Strings & Timpani. It's the latest project by guitarist Stephan Meidell and drummer Øyvind Hegg-Lunde, two musicians who have a long-standing relationship with Hubro and the wider Scandinavian experimental music scene. This album is a perfectly recorded suite of tracks, made all the more remarkable when one considers that a large part of it was recorded live at Bergen's Nattjazz Festival in 2016.

Opening track 'Cashmere' washes in with evocative swoops of harp over an insistent electronic pulse before wordless vocals and bluesy guitar add to the drama. I'm loathe to use the word journey but there's a sense that you're about to be taken somewhere. 'Escargot' follows, driven by a repeated bass line, it features French language vocals from the Mari Kvien Brunvoll and Eva Pfitzenmaier. My rudimentary, rusty French won't allow for a full translation but I guarantee you're unlike to hear a more engaging song about a snail anytime soon. It eventually drifts out with bursts of slide guitar. It's as if the soundtrack to Paris, Texas has been reimagined in some far off parallel universe.

'Swarming strings Made Out Of Light' sees the vocals switch to English, but are half-buried beneath a barrage of percussion. Three songs in and it's becoming clear that Voice & Strings & Timpani is a genre-free zone, though it's disparate tracks are held together by a uniformed sense of purpose between the musicians involved. And so it continues throughout the rest of the record. 'Laxevaag' containing percussion that sound like ticking clocks, added noise that could be dogs barking, and a textural layering of keyboards. It's a simultaneously disorientating and meditative.

'Community' is a short folksy interlude featuring effects laden vocals and flutes. It gives way to the epic emotional electronic beats of 'Talk Tick Talk'. Much like the album's cover, an abstract photo of oil on water, the music is fluid, ever shifting, and though it's primary colours don't change much, the way they're put together does. It's a strange yet and enchanting record, one that deserves the undivided attention of a one-sitting headphone listen, and one that will have you finding more with each listen.