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Written in fRoots issue 194/195, 1999
 

GROUPA
Lavalek
Xource XOUCD 125 (1999)

UTLA
Dans
NOR-CD 9935 (1999)

KENNEMARK, SIMONSON, KÄLLMAN
Bäsk
Xource XOUCD 124 (1999)

Since its last album, Imeland, there’s been a substantial change in the sound of Groupa, a band whose present and past personnel have been key participants in several of the Swedish revival’s turning points. Long-time members Mats Edén, Jonas Simonson and Rickard Åström have been joined, successively, by two of Norway’s most distinctive drummer/percussionists, first Helge Norbakken and now Terje Isungset. More recently still, with the arrival of Sofia Karlsson the band has acquired its first singer since 1990’s splendid collaboration with Lena Willemark, Månskratt.
      Lavalek is a music of big, loping beats punctuated and intensified by calm moments. Edén has always had a strong connection with Norwegian music, and this album sees Groupa co-produced by Isungset’s Utla colleague Karl Seglem and recording in the studio he usually uses for albums on his NOR-CD label, Bergen’s Grieghallen. With one Norwegian exception the material sources are all Swedish, including some Edén and Simonson originals, but the non-chordal, natural-scale aspects and wildness brought out by Edén’s dronal fiddling and Simonson’s use of breathy-toned and natural-harmonic flutes, over Isungset’s rolling, deep-booming and clattering skin, wood, metal and stone percussion, point up parallels in the fiddling and new roots evolutions of Norway. Åström, being a keyboard player, might be expected to introduce a few chords, but he barely does; he’s as involved in this harmonically open music as the rest of them, and his lines and choice of rough, powerful sounds integrate seamlessly with the acoustic instruments.
      Karlsson’s membership is so recent there are only three actual songs, but it’s clear from them and from the new line-up’s live performances how well she fits; exuberant in up-tempo numbers, drawing narrative pieces into a quiet place with commanding, tightly grace-noted control.

      Also recorded at Grieghallen, Norwegian trio Utla’s second album continues in its unpicking of the Norwegian fiddle tradition and exploration of the musical sensibilities which continue to exist within it, the older ways of pushing notes and rhythms around until they’re exciting. In this Utla is natural kin to Groupa (and indeed Hedningarna), and now that Isungset, with his unique organic drum-kit, is in both bands the connection is even clearer. His bass drum is like a magnified version of the fiddler’s footstamp, the shifting pulse which emphasises the heartbeat within the natural-scale hypnotic tunes from Håkon Høgemo’s driving hardingfele, under which Karl Seglem’s tenor sax often tracks like an octivider or interjects tangential notes, while some tracks are driven by the quivering infuriated-wasp buzz of Isungset’s jew’s-harp. Unrelieved by oases of contrasting calm, it’s fairly unrelenting; the band goes for a total-immersion approach, and its extremism is part of its strength of identity.

      It’s a feature of the Swedish roots scene that there are no lame semi-skilled fiddlers scraping over a rhythm section; the revival went deep and early into skill-acquisition, and the leading bands are staffed by musicians with great understanding of and expertise in traditional music, with large repertoires which they expand with new composition. These are the sort of musicians who don’t pack up just because the gig’s finished; they often play together socially and also form smaller performing groups. Bäsk is a set of traditional Swedish and Norwegian and new-made tunes from the intertwining fiddle or viola, baritone or soprano sax, and flutes, respectively, of three Göteborg veterans of some influential Swedish roots bands: Hans Kennemark (Forsmark Tre, Tritonus), Sten Källman (Filarfolket, Den Fule and the high-energy Haitian-music band Simbi) and Groupa’s Jonas Simonson (who was also a member of the now defunct Den Fule).
      As might be expected, it’s full of life and articulacy. And, like the Utla and Groupa albums, it’s a stranger to chords.


© 1999 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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