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Written in fRoots issue 346, 2012


ANITA SKORGAN
På Gyllen Grunn
Kirkelig Kulturverksted FXCD 370 (2011)

Emanuel Vigeland was the brother of sculptor Gustav Vigeland, whose powerful stone-carvings displaying human life fill Frogner Park in Oslo. In his painted mural Vita Emanuel also took as his theme humanity and eroticism from conception to death. Its intertwining naked bodies entirely cover the interior of the windowless, almost pitch dark interior of the Vigeland Mausoleum at Slemdal in Oslo, and are gradually revealed as one’s eyes become dark-adapted. He originally built the place in 1926 as his museum, then altered it to become his own tomb.
     But it’s not just a visual spectacle; its high, smooth-walled arched shape gives it an extraordinary long-sustaining reverberation, so warm and long that any sound swells to musicality and single notes merge to become a chord.
     Quite a few people have made recordings there, including traditional singer Unni Løvlid on her 2005 CD Vita. Taking up the cycle-of-life theme in På Gyllen Grunn (On Golden Ground), with the deeply serene female voice that is a significant aspect of the country’s distinctive area of folk-rooted chanson - Kari Bremnes, for example – Anita Skorgan sings, to traditional melodies, lyrics by KKV founder, boss and producer Erik Hillestad that form a hymn to life and end by quoting from a poem by Vigeland.
     She’s accompanied in huge, floating calm or surging menace by Arve Henriksen’s misty trumpet, Rolf Lislevand’s lutes, Eivind Aarseth’s processed electric guitar and Helge Norbakken’s drums. Normally putting several sound sources into that acoustic, where even one person speaking multiplies to threatening muttering, would probably result in overwhelming cacophony, but by careful close and distant miking everything’s kept under control to make an album of warmth, clarity and rather gorgeous rolling spaciousness.

     www.kkv.no


© 2011 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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