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Written in Folk Roots issue 139/140, 1995

ANNBJØRG LIEN
Felefeber
Grappa GRCD 4081 (1994)

HØGEMO, SEGLEM, ISUNGSET
Juv
NOR-CD 9309 (1993)

It’s five years since Annbjørg Lien’s last solo album, Annbjørg, a collaboration with The Brazz Brothers’ Helge Førde using approaches from jazz and rock on traditional hardingfele material which caused considerable interest outside Norway and some controversy at home. This new one takes a completely different tack; the instrumentation consists just of Annbjørg’s hardingfele and nyckelharpa, Väsen’s Roger Tallroth on guitar, octave mandolin and bass balalaika, and Iver Kleive on church organ, with contributions from Steinar Ofsdal’s flutes, and a distant joik-ish anonymous male vocal on Springar etter Kristiane Lund.
      The feel is predominantly stately, though Tallroth does let loose a shout on his own tune, Dragos, and there’s drive when it’s really needed, for example on Nordfjordhallingen, where the church organ, an instrument usually difficult to use in accompaniment of faster rhythmic pieces because of time delays between keyboard and note, shows that it too can pitch in with venom. The material is largely traditional, with some of Lien’s own compositions. One of those, the title track, sprang from sessioning with musicians “from other musical environments” - audibly Ireland, in the shape of quotes from Sí Bheag & Sí Mhór, and Scotland. The air Et Lite Barn, though traditional Norwegian, has here a distinct Scots feel, too. (Actually, Scotland is often credited in Norway, a country of considerable national modesty, with being the source of the hardingfele.) This isn’t an album to grab you by the throat in the first couple of tracks, but like much Norwegian music by the end it seems to have moved you into a more lucid frame of mind.

      Taking a different approach is Juv, by Hardangerfiddler Håkon Høgemo, saxist Karl Seglem and percussionist Terje Isungset, all leading figures in the area of fresh but deeply rooted approaches to Norwegian music. The absence of a chord-oriented instrument in the line-up gives their work, on this and the preceding album Utla, a strong feel of the open, melody and rhythm oriented, floating modality that makes Norwegian music so distinctive, and also perhaps so valuable as an area which has escaped domination by either the western classical tradition or Euro-American pop approaches.
      Seglem’s sax playing is of the new and still evolving Nordic jazz form, ever ready to embrace and reflect the depth and subtlety of Høgemo’s hardingfele playing of these largely traditional tunes, never hinting that it would really like to take off into the land of bebop. Isungset’s percussion, too, is part of the new Nordic thinking - sparse, never itching to break into a groove unless the tune already suggests it, and using strong and intriguing sounds with parallels in the current developments of percussion in Sámi music. Honest, free-thinking and fresh.


© 1994 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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