SKRIM - The Crooked Path

Uneasy listening – improvsed excursions to the outer limits.

Before we get to the sounds on the new album by Norwegian duo SKRIM and their accompanying guest musicians, I must mention the album design. The sleeve art features an arresting ariel photograph of the intricate traffic system in Osaka, Japan. It's modern, complicated, confusing yet somehow planned and purposeful. Open the gatefold sleeve on the vinyl edition and there's a larger shot from a different angle, that expands the view.

In many ways these photos perfectly represent the music within. It's at times similarly confusing, multi-layered and complex, perhaps designed to take the listener out of their comfort zone and to question what the role of sound and music is. There are no songs as such on The Crooked Path. Instead the album is broken down into two improvised, free-ranging parts – 'When Mammals Go Dancing' and 'Akihabara by Night', each taking up one side of the vinyl.

So who are SKRIM? Morten Qvenild and Gard Nilssen were previously know as duo sPacemonKey. (That's their chosen upper/lower casing by the way, not my bad typing!) The pair renamed themselves SKRIM for this release after the mountainous region of Norway that separates the cities of Kongsberg and Skien. SKRIM are joined on this album by Ståle Storløkken (organ/electronics) and Stian Westerhus (guitar/electronics).

Much like the mountainous region the duo named themselves after there are peaks and troughs within this music. Full on electronic cacophony at times, in other places quiet, sombre passages with space for melodies to breath and weave. There are times when riffs emerge and the quartet make a brutalist post-punk noise. Even when there's a seemingly all encompassing barrage of drums and atonal electronic squawks, there are still melodies to be found, albeit buried. Perhaps a ploy to make you listen harder, they act as gifts and rewards for making the effort.

The Crooked Path will be unlikely to find an audience outside of late night Radio Three and 6Music Feakzone listeners but I guess SKRIM are not making music to become popular. More likely their mission and purpose is to explore the possibilities of what can be achieved with four open-minded musicians in one room. If you're looking for a lesser travelled path this could be just the unsettling experience you're after. Be brave, be bold, and travel to the furthest reaches, you may enjoy it there!

 

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.

Erland Dahlen - Bones

An immersive listening experience. Norwegian percussionist releases fourth solo LP. 

 

On a recent episode of Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, the author David Mitchell spoke about one of his record choices as making him feel emotions he didn't know existed and making him feel nostalgic for times and places he doesn't even know. I may have got the wording slightly wrong there but hopefully you get a sense of the sentiment. I'm reminded of this quote while listening to the new album by Erland Dahlen, a much respected percussionist within free-jazz circles in his native Norway. Bones is Dahlen's fourth album, having previously released Rolling Bomber (2012), Blossom Bells (2015), and Clocks (2018).

You would think that the tendency for drummers as bandleaders would be to make virtuosity and showiness the central feature when it comes to recording. (I'm reminded here of a Gene Krupa/Buddy Rich LP I picked up at a charity shop, where the two pitch up against each other. It's a fine record but its emotional resonance is hampered by the desire to show off chops.) Thankfully that's not the case here – Bones is all about the emotional journey. Meditative, hypnotic, at times soothing, always immersive.

Dahlen plays pretty much all the music himself, which features a broad range of drums and percussion instruments along with Mellotron, modular synths, dulcimer and zither. The album has a rich instrumental palette, and one that embraces experimentation – along with the vintage drum skins used there are musical saws and the sound of marbles rattling on a plate. Also notable is the use of heavy reverb, which along with the virtuosic drumming and focus on emotion makes for a compelling one-sitting listening experience, full of progression and forward movement.

The last year has been one of increased solitude for many, a time when if you've been lucky enough to stay healthy and solvent there's been an opportunity to take yourself on an inner journey. A record such as Bones is a perfect soundtrack for such moments of reflection. It's an album that requires you to turn off the phone, TV, and tablets, to put on some headphones and let the music take you somewhere.

Click here for Hubro Records

 

Jo Berger & Ólafur Björn Ólafsson - Lanzarote

Minimal emotive improvisations from the far north.

The story as to how these two musicians based in the far north, (Berger hails from Norway, Ólafsson from Iceland), have come to title their latest work after an island situated off Africa's west coast is both moving and multi-pronged. Firstly their fascination for the island, with its beaches, mountains and volcanic desert landscape, took root during visits there to perform. There is also a literary association - the island is used by French novelist Michel Houellebecq in his 2005 book, The Possibility of an Island, as the setting for a cult dedicated to finding eternal life. Again Berger and Ólafsson's shared interest in the author's work is something that has informed their new album. The most resonant association with the island however is the most poignant. It was the last place Ólafsson saw his friend, fellow Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, only a few months before his passing, having travelled there to play a show together in a cave.

The first piece of music on Lanzarote is 'Grain Of Sand'. It's dedicated to Jóhannsson and sets the emotional tone for much of what follows. Based around an improvised sparse notes from upright piano and double bass, there's a distinctly Nordic melancholic aspect to the piece. The fact that you can hear the creak of the piano pedals adds to the feeling of being in the room as the music is being recorded. It encourages a sense of stillness, and calm, quiet reflection.

The rest of the album similarly encourages the listener to explore their own inner head-space. The music is minimal, with unobtrusive overdubs of percussion, Farfisa organ, Moog synthesizer, and brass. There are no attention grabbing moves or motifs, no bells and whistles. This is not music that grabs you by the lapels and demand you listen. It's an altogether more delicate approach, conversely one that's is more effective. The audience for this may be a niche one, but that's in no way a measure of this music's subtle power and far-reaching emotional impact.

Click here for Hubro Records.

Skarbø Skulekorps

Joyfully eclectic music to set your mind and spirit free.

The force is strong with this one. An album that has repeatedly forced its way to the top of my listening pile through its downright refusal of categorisation and, more importantly, the infectious vitality of its music. Øyvind Skarbø is a Norwegian composer, an important player in the country's improvisational music scene, and formerly best known as the drummer in 1982. Having left the band two years ago in search of new musical avenues, and following a brief period of wondering just what the hell to do next, he comes up with this. Skarbø Skulekorps is a seven-piece group of musicians he's brought together to breath life into his recent compositions.

Inspired in part by the school bands Skarbø played in during his youth, where juxtapositions of genres were given little concern, the group have made a record where all notions of fashion and styles have been thrown up in the air. The random positions where they've landed are one of the record's main strengths. Similarly the notion of coolness, always over-rated in my opinion, has been disregarded completely. As in those school bands, what matters most was/is the playing, always the pure joy of ensemble playing.

The result is an album where free-jazz meets pop, industrial, electronica, lounge, exotica and disco. At times strictly adhering to Skarbø's well-planned compositions, with occasional improvisational passages and containing experiments in rhythm, texture, harmonies and timings. Expect saxophone and trumpet solos, over a backdrop of weeping pedal steel, vibraphone, synths as well as the more traditional bass, guitar and drums.

Skarbø Skulekorps is a record that can move from sounding like the soundtrack to a psychological TV thriller to the most joyous, globally-minded pop in seemingly effortless leaps. There are parallels with recent genre-flipping records by artists such as Karl Blau, Aquaserge and Melody's Echo Chamber, but Skarbø Skulekorps has a character all of its own, and one that makes for curiously compelling listening. Check out the video below for more details as to how the album came to be.

Click here Skarbø Skulekorps' website.

Click here for Skarbø Skulekorps on Instagram.

Click here for Hubro Records.