- Cloud Valley Music website -
- Andrew Cronshaw website -
- Andrew Cronshaw MySpace -

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -

Written in fRoots issue 264, 2005
 

FLUKT
Drufiacc
Lindberg Lyd 2L 23 (2004)

MAJORSTUEN
Joran Jogga
Majorstuen Fiddlers Company MFC 01 (2004)

A distinctive feature of today’s Norwegian music is its innovative drummers - the likes of Helge Norbakken, Terje Isungset or Paolo Vinaccia – and there’s quite a tradition of drums or percussion without their usual partner of bass, be it the footstamp of the fiddler, the traditional drum groups, or combinations such as the accordion and drums duo of Gabriel Fliflet and Ole Hamre.
      At the time of its first album the trio Flukt did have a bassist, but now in his place is drummer Håvard Sterten, joining accordionist Øivind Farmen and the fiddle and hardingfele of Sturla Eide. Together they make a big powerful sound, on some tracks comparable in dance drive to Sweden’s Väsen but with a Norwegian repertoire of pols, schottis, wedding music and originals. With Drufiacc, capturing their all-out excitement but with plenty of contrasts in pace, style and texture, Flukt emerges as a major band on the Norwegian scene and a prime candidate for the wider world.

      High-energy young Oslo six-fiddle band Majorstuen made waves with their first album, picking up a Norwegian Grammy and a considerable number of gigs at home and abroad. The new release, this time on their own label, is virtually all devoted to their own compositions. They use standard fiddles, not hardanger, and unlike the traditional unison-playing spelemannslags they bounce off one another with harmonies and arrangements. The fiddles’ tonal range is sometimes expanded downward by individuals switching to viola or cello, and though there’s occasionally pizzicato, the band’s exuberant rhythmic drive comes not from any kind of rhythm section but essentially from incisive bowing. As their press release says, this time they’ve “taken a step away from the clever”, with a definite gain in light and shade, and their compositions continue to expand Norwegian fiddle tradition, which has had a shot in the arm from the influx of young players, many of them gaining from today’s expanded folk music educational opportunities such as the course at Oslo’s Norwegian State Academy of Music and the Ole Bull Academy in Voss.


© 2005 Andrew Cronshaw



You're welcome to quote from reviews on this site, but please credit the writer and fRoots.

Links:
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.

It's not practical to give, and keep up to date, current contact details and sales sources for all the artists and labels in these reviews, but try Googling for them, and where possible buy direct from the artists.
CDRoots.com in the USA, run by Cliff Furnald, is a reliable and independent online retail source, with reviews, of many of the CDs in these reviews; it's connected to his excellent online magazine Rootsworld.com 

For more reviews click on the regions below

NORDIC        BALTIC        IBERIA (& islands)   

CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE, & CAUCASUS   

OTHER EUROPEAN        AMERICAS        OTHER, AND WORLD IN GENERAL

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -