The 16-minute album opener “Between the Fingers the Drops of Tomorrow's Dawn” coalesces at the 12-minute point, when clattering percussion meshes with what sounds like a sitar to fashion a hypnotic, repetitive whole. It’s as if Slovenia’s Širom have used the time so far to work themselves into a trance-like state. Iztok Koren, Ana Kravanja and Samo Kutin have surrendered to the drone.
In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper is Širom’s fifth album. Not only does it bear a characteristically mysterious cover image and title, it is also long. Over 74 minutes, there are just seven tracks: the lengthiest is a few seconds short of 19 minutes, the shortest are a pair clocking-in at between three and four minutes. In keeping with the album’s name, the titles of individual tracks are similarly enigmatic: “No One's Footsteps Deep in the Beat of a Butterfly's Wings,” “The Hangman's Shadow Fifteen Years on,” “For You, This Eve, the Wolves Will be Enchantingly Forsaken.” Vocals, when they emerge from the instrumental swirl, are generally wordless chants. Širom are not direct.
However, the folk-based Širom – pronounced “she-rom” – cast a spell. Their meticulously constructed sound-world envelops. In the Wind of Night… is less intense than their live shows, but this is the most potent studio-captured distillation so far of their seamless synthesis of disparate traditional instrumentation – from far and wide: the Mongolian stringed morin khuur features, as does the West-African balafon and an oddly bluegrass-inclined banjo. Acoustic music rarely sounds this forceful. As a pointer to Širom’s individuality, plausible fellow travellers from the past are the most folk-slanted and also drone-focussed bands associated with Sweden’s late Sixties/early Seventies progg (sic) scene. Some of the records by, say, Arbete och fritid or Kebnekajse.
Even so, the unconventional Širom, now in their 10th year, have consistently imagined a form of music which sounds like nothing else. Live, it really is a trip. On In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper, the impact is more understated – but, still, inner space beckons.
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