Album: Erlend Apneseth - Song Over Støv

A pizzicato violin opens Song Over Støv. Gradually, other instruments arrive: bowed violin, a fluttering flute, pattering percussion, an ominous double bass. They merge. The climax is furious, intensely rhythmic. Suddenly, it is over.

“Straumen frobi” – which translates from Norwegian as The Current Passing By – sets the scene for five more equally dynamic, just-as feverish tracks. Each is as much about the structured interplay of instruments as it is impact. At times – especially during “I natt” (Tonight) and “Trø” (Step) – proceedings evoke the folk music/rock hybrid characterised by Sweden’s late Sixties/early Seventies progg (sic) scene; of bands like Arbete & Fritid (their Ur Spår album) and Tråd Grås och Stenar (as caught on the live Gårdet album).

The architect of Song Over Støv – Song Over Dust – is Norway’s Erlend Apneseth, a respected player of the Hardanger Fiddle – the hardingfele – a form of violin with a second set of sympathetic strings; an instrument known in Norway from around 1700, and made in the country from 1850. He has evolved a non-genre approach to music while, in parallel, keeping a foot planted in the traditional scene from which he emerged. What he’s developed isn’t folk, but an impressionistic art-music employing instrumentation familiar in the vernacular.

Song Over Støv is Apneseth’s fifth solo album. There are another five made under the Erlend Apneseth Trio flag. Numerous collaborations too: he has worked with jazz players, experimentalists like Stephan Meidell, Kim Myhr and Maja S. K. Ratkje, and accordionist Frode Haltli’s Avant Folk project. The discography is substantial. On Song Over Støv, familiar fellow Norwegians joining Apneseth include Mats Eilertsen (double bass), Frode Haltli (accordion), Hans Hulbækmo (drums, percussion), Anja Lauvdal (harmonium, synthesizer), Helga Myhr (Hardanger fiddle, vocals) and Veslemøy Narvesen (drums, percussion). Overall, there are 12 players.

On the heady Song Over Støv all of this coalesces as documenting a journey into the centre of a vortex. The album is about getting there, about capturing the intensity required to achieve this objective.

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