Nordic music
Albums of the Year 2020: Joensuu 1685 - ÖBSaturday, 02 January 2021
This breathtakingly lovely album opens with the aptly titled “Hey My Friend (We’re Here Again)”. Before the October 2020 release of ÖB and its related singles, the last record Finland’s Joensuu 1685 issued was a 12-inch on a Norwegian label which... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: This Is Our Music - Jazz Out Of NorwaySunday, 30 August 2020
The Turnamat is a type of washing machine made by AEG. In the composition titled “Turnamat”, Seventies-type synths, wobbly keyboard lines and hard-grooving drums give way to a brass-led interlude suggesting an acquaintance with the compositions... Read more... |
Alice Boman, Union Chapel review - Swedish singer-songwriter confounds expectationsThursday, 27 February 2020
Judging by her debut album, Malmö singer-songwriter Alice Boman’s frosted-glass musical aesthetic has the odd hint of Mazzy Star and draws from the sound world created for Twin Peaks – a similar outlook to Gothenburg’s El Perro del Mar. Dream On is... Read more... |
Björk, SSE Hydro, Glasgow review- Icelandic experimentalist reimagines live performanceWednesday, 27 November 2019
Grimes, the Canadian art pop performer, made headlines last week when she predicted the end of musical performance as we know it on a podcast interview with theoretical physicist Sean Carroll. Live music, she said, would be “obsolete soon”, while... Read more... |
Eyck, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - theremin takes centre stageFriday, 22 November 2019
The theremin is still a relatively rare visitor to concert halls, particularly in a solo role, but Carolina Eyck is changing that. Her instrument, invented by Lev Termen just 100 years ago, is a relatively simple piece of kit – a tone generator... Read more... |
Hubro 10th-Anniversary Concert, The Spice of Life review - boundary pushing Norwegian label marks its birthdayMonday, 04 November 2019
A fiddle projects upwards from between Erlend Apneseth’s knees. Seated, he holds another in his right hand facing-off the instruments against each other. He’s plucking both, the pizzicato pitter-patter suggesting water drops on a bell or a koto. On... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Dip - Ḣ-Camp Meets Lo-FiSunday, 13 October 2019
The temptation with the 20th anniversary reissue of Ḣ-Camp Meets Lo-Fi (Explosion Picture Score) is to look for traces of what came earlier and pointers towards what would come in Iceland’s music. The album was credited to Dip, a collaboration... Read more... |
Mullova, Philharmonia, Järvi, RFH review – clear paths through the forestMonday, 13 May 2019
Visit Ainola, Sibelius’s woodland house by Lake Tuusula north of Helsinki, and you’ll be told the story of the green stove. It appears that the famously synaesthetic Finnish composer identified the shade of his heating installation with the key of F... Read more... |
CD: Vök - In the DarkWednesday, 27 February 2019
Although In the Dark comprises 11 tracks of outward-facing contemporary North European electronica-infused, dance-edged pop along the lines of “Faded”, the 2015 international hit helmed by Norwegian DJ/producer Alan Walker, an undercurrent implies a... Read more... |
CD: Susanna & The Brotherhood of Our Lady - Garden of Earthly DelightsTuesday, 19 February 2019
Lyrics such as “are we hunting for life among misery, Satan have pity on my long distress” and “we’re on a ship of fools, sails laughing and singing to hell” telegraph that, as a commentary on the present, Garden of Earthly Delights isn’t painting a... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Hedvig Mollestad, Norway's bridge between heavy metal and jazzSaturday, 19 January 2019
Norway’s Hedvig Mollestad Trio reset the dial to what jazz fusion sought to do when it emerged, and do so in such a way that it’s initially unclear whether they are a jazz-influenced heavy metal outfit or jazzers plunging feet-first into metal.... Read more... |
Hannigan, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - the sublime and the beautifulFriday, 11 January 2019
With the London Symphony Orchestra often playing like some commanding and relentless force of nature, Sir Simon Rattle steered two mighty avalanches of Nordic sound into a concert of granitic authority last night. However, I suspect that many people... Read more... |
