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Written in fRoots issue 268, 2005


FRIGG
Keidas – Oasis – Oase
Frigg FRIGG00002 / NorthSide NSD 6086 (2005)

There’s plenty about the band Frigg in the feature elsewhere in this issue; suffice it here to say that they’re five Finns and two Norwegians, with a four-fiddle, frets and bass line-up, who’ve already made waves live and with their first album, and are likely to make more with this second and as alert festival bookers pick up on them.
      Their sound-palette has continued to expand, this time including Petri Prauda’s Estonian bagpipes. They sound not unlike the Swedish pipes, and give something of a Hedningarna-like squee and chirrup to the wild, pounding Mäenpään Heikin Valssi and, in combination with Esko Järvelä on church organ and a chamber orchestra including leading Finnish classical violinist Pekka Kuusisto and the band’s Alina Järvelä, the pipes lead Antti Järvelä’s rich string arrangement of the stately march that still graces the funeral of a folk musician in Kaustinen, Peltoniemen Hintriikin Surumarssi.
      Both these are traditional melodies (or rather, it’s not known who wrote them), but it’s the sign of a living tradition that new tunes are being made, and most here are by band members (and one, Return From Helsinki, was written by British guitarist friend of the band Ian Stephenson in regret for the end of his exchange year at Sibelius Academy). As experienced players who are very familiar with the wide traditional repertoire, not just of Finland but of other northern European countries, a new tune has to be pretty good to hold up; theirs do, and are likely to pass into tradition.
      The heart of the band is, of course, the impeccable, zippy harmonising of the four fiddles, but they’re not full on all the time. The Larsen brothers switch to hardanger fiddles, accompanied by guitar, cittern, church organ and bass, for Gjermund Larsen’s Toastmaster’s March. A very fine fiddler himself, Antti Järvelä is on most tracks fully occupied on double bass, to which he brings a fiddler’s ingenuity and drive, but he has chance to swap to the little guy for Tuomas Logrén’s guitar, mandolin and fiddle trio Tepeq, which was dually inspired by the music of Ingrian herdsman and birchbark flute player Teppo Repo and by French Canadian music; these Finns get to study their own traditional music deeply but they’re not inward-looking. Logrén’s dobro, a key feature of the band’s differentness, makes just one tantalising appearance, on the joyful polska Toulpagorni, with a solo worthy of Jerry Douglas that suits the music perfectly.


© 2005 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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fRoots - The feature and review-packed UK-based monthly world roots music magazine in which these reviews were published, and by whose permission they're reproduced here.

Kansanmusiikki-instituutti (Finland's national Folk Music Institute).

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