Customer Reviews

Frifot

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
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This fascinating CD combines the mystic calm of a northern isles fiddle with the fire and fury of Swedish folk-jazz - and boy! does it swing! There are ample evidences of the jazz and 'new age' influences of the players - but the CD never makes the mistake of slipping fully into either of these genres. The sound quality is excellent, as you'd expect from ECM, and the fascinating mix of instrumental timbres - including a hammered dulcimer and Swedish bagpipes! - is a joy to the ear. Full of both complex and simple melody, this disc mixes striking vocals with rich instrumental soundscapes that never get dull - just when you think you know what's coming next, it all changes! But it all hangs together too - beautifully. Highly recommended - a must for anybody who likes jazz, or folk, and who thought they had heard it all!

This is my first exposure to Swedish folk music, and I'm loving it. And these are some fine fine musicians.

I saw a rave review of this album, so I bought it because I was in the mood for something new. The music is exotic, sometimes lively, sometimes melancholy, but always spirited. This is one intense record. I just love the Swedish bagpipes and the fiddling.

As a classically-trained musician, I am fascinated by the quirky harmonies and rhythms of Swedish music. Ale Moller, Lena Willemark, and Per are outstanding musicians in every sense of the word...while not losing the spontaneous and rough-hewn quality of good folk music, they arrange the music in a very smart way so that every chord change and every improsivatory passage is absolutely captivating. This kind of music excites the imagination and takes it on all sorts of fantastical journeys. This is folk music at its best --endlessly rich and varied, surviving the test of repeated listening.

Probably their best work. Shows the diversity in the beauty of the groups folk-style playing: some tunes emphasize vocals, some straight-up polskas, some with their rhythmic syncopations. Although the band seems to be centered around 3 players (viola, violin, and mandola/cittern), they additionally play other instruments, such as various flutes, pipes, harmonica, dulcimer, cowhorn, etc, and perhaps add other instrumentalists on some tracks (I don't have the liner notes). So the great thing about their albums: it doesn't get old.

As far as the actual tunes go, this is my personal favorite for that alone. A few tracks are absolutely essential works of folk art: Fafanglighet, Dromsken, Metaren, & Roligs Per-Latar. Perhaps seeming similar, at first, in immediate appearance to Irish music, the nature of the sound is really quite different; more impassioned than your average jig, slip-jig, or reel. There are times where the players seem to be straining the volume and tonal abilities of their instrument to their peak, especially on their harmonies. There is also a sense of "melodic compression" in a couple of the tunes... Where a main melody is repeated, or its rhythm is condensed or altered, ...but at a lesser note value than originally introduced, until it catches up with the beat once again.

The one track the stands out the most is "I Hela Naturen." Divinely executed, it starts like a loosely-woven ballad between Ale and Lena. It soon enough moves into it's three-four polska feel on solo cittern. Fiddles come in only for last minute or so and truly take it to supernatural planes. Individuated in the nature of their instrument's parts, but so together on the engulfing nature of their dynamics, it's hard to imagine a group's sound could be any more compelling.

Prior to this group's recordings, I had no real interest in or knowledge of what a "Scandinavian" sound to one's playing might be. And now that I do, they've created an appetite in me that has me doing research -- going through the webbing of the internet, looking for artists that play with at least a slightly similar air, and that have as potent an effect. Sorry to say (but also not surprised that...) they're few and far between.