During the opening seconds of Mirra, an unusual sound leaps out – a grunting. It’s integral to a shifting aural pallete which also features a bowed violin and chiming percussion along with a recurring grind like that of a rotating waterwheel. The mood is chilly, suggesting an environment where unalloyed nature has the upper hand, a place where the seasons define what comes to pass.
It turns out the grunting is a recording of a wild reindeer. Norwegian hardanger fiddle (the hardingfele) player Benedicte Maurseth’s thematically related follow-up to 2022’s Hárr interweaves recordings of the wildlife native to the Hardanger Plateau – the Hardangervidda – with instrumental arrangements evoking this area of central Norway. An ecosophy motivated core concern of the haunting Mirra is human encroachment, and how this animal population is threatened. It’s not just the reindeer herds. The arctic fox, marsh harrier, snowy owl, wolverine and more are at risk too. In concrète fashion, all are heard on Mirra. So are Maurseth’s fellow Norwegian musical boundary pushers Mats Eilertsen, Morten Qvenild and Håkon Mørch Stene. In Norway, hardanger fiddle player Erlend Apneseth is operating on a similar path to Maurseth.
As the opening track “Mirra” – the word for the mass movement of the reindeer herds – makes clear, Mirra the album favours atmosphere over melody. Within this self-defined remit, each of the eight tracks captures a specific element of the cycle of the year. There is “Kalven reiser set” (“The Calf Rises”), Sommarbeite (“Summer Grazing”) and “Jaktmarsj” (“Hunting March”). While moments are pacific, this is a stunningly intense album – a tendency bolstered by Maurseth’s hardanger fiddle, an instrument with a second set of resonating strings: this adds an underpinning akin to an ever-present wind.
Musically, although springing off from folk, the closest analogy – attitudinally, not stylistically – is of Jon Hassell’s Fourth World Music were it melded with first-album-period Harmonia and shoegazing’s shimmer at its most impressionistic. This, though, is a pointer not a specification. The wonderful Mirra exists in its own space.
