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Written in Folk Roots issue 181, 1998

LANG LINKEN
Lyst
CE Musik CEMCD 0597 (1997)

MORTEN ALFRED HØIRUP
Vingården
Between Your Ears BYEP CD 001 (1998)

As the current Danish roots music movement gathers steam, experienced and lively acoustic trio Lang Linken provides a likeable and listenable statement of the traditional dance music and songs on which the revival is largely founded. It's been together a long time - 28 years, actually - which might suggest tiredness and stiffness would have set in by now, but far from it - the band is in its prime.
      Diatonic accordionist and gnome-like lead vocalist Carl Erik Lundgaard was the traditional musician heart of the late lamented folk-rock band Danish Dia Delight. Poul Lendal plays fiddle, with strongly driven bow and a choppy, dancing skip, while Keld Nørgaard, also a fiddler, drives the piano, and between them they add bagpipe, guitar, humle, hurdy-gurdy, seljefløyte, jew’s-harp and more. The CD comprises music, including hopsa, trekant, waltz and polka, learnt from older musicians such as the late fiddler Evald Thomsen, with the occasional song and new tune. The feel is closer to English dance music than to other Nordic dance musics, but with a distinctive Danish lift.

      Morten Alfred Høirup was the guitarist with Danish Dia Delight, and might be known to some Brits for backing Chris Wood and Andy Cutting on their Live At Sidmouth CD. His family background is in circus music, and he’s generally known as a versatile hot swing/jazz player, particularly with the American Café Orchestra. That trio’s other members - US fiddler Ruthie Dornfeld and Finnish bassist Tapani Varis - appear on Vingården, his first solo album, but he’s made a radical departure from his usual style into a more modal approach, and some conversational singing. He’s also joined by the traditional instruments of Lang Linken, creating a well-integrated ensemble sound in which Dornfeld’s fiddle is particularly strongly featured, in six new instrumental compositions influenced by Danish, Swedish and Balkan forms and three Danish traditional ballads. It’s still early days in the Danish revival, and while the dance tunes of the last couple of hundred years are being generally explored little has yet been done with the much older-rooted material of the ballads, so this is ground-breaking stuff.


© 1998 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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