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

- Back to Reviews Introduction page -

Written in fRoots issue 242/243, 2003
 

UTLA
Song
NORCD 0351 (2003)

KARL SEGLEM
Nye Nord
NORCD 0246 (2002)

The magnificently wild grinding, buzzing, honking and thundering that is Utla was received with great surprise and acclaim at the “Across The North Sea” concerts in Edinburgh earlier this year.
      There they performed in their usual format of an instrumental trio – Karl Seglem on saxes and animal horns, champion Hardanger fiddler Håkon Høgemo, and percussionist Terje Isungset playing jew’s harp and whatever skin, wood, metal or stone can be hit and clattered to make a mighty noise. (His own most recent album is of music played entirely on instruments made of ice).
      But from time to time over the past ten or so years singer Berit Opheim has guested with the group, and she does so again on Song, which largely features her singing of traditional songs and tralling plus some herding calling. Like Norwegian traditional singing and hardanger fiddling, the music of Utla which surrounds her is a thing of no chords; it’s about melodic line, natural scales and rhythm, her voice set against textures that are the auditory equivalent of lichen-encrusted rock in sharp northern light.

      Karl Seglem’s music is one of the best examples of a specifically Norwegian phenomenon: an open, airy music that has grown up in the past twenty or so years in which the melodies and unsquare rhythms of traditional song and fiddling have come together with new Nordic jazz, which while it involves sax players has virtually no connection with American jazz. It also shows the sort of unfettered exploration of sounds and textures that is usually associated with avant-garde music. Saxist Jan Garbarek is of course well-known for this kind of thing, but while he has many and varied projects, only some of which are part of the new Norwegian music, Seglem is more continuously involved in it, in his work with a variety of musicians and with his NORCD record label. Nye Nord is both a progression and a summary of his opus.
      On it Seglem has written all the music apart from one traditional song tune, but the open, natural-scale shapes of tradition seem to weave through it, sometimes surfacing, sometimes as an underlying form. He plays tenor sax and tungehorn (an animal horn with a reed), and there are appearances by the other members of Utla. Isungset’s jew’s-harp playing is particularly notable, for example as an almost synth-like continuo over his organic percussion between Seglem’s tenor and Bjørn Kjellemyr’s double bass in Grøn Eld.
      With them are a team including Christian Wallumrød on electric piano, electric and acoustic guitarist Morten Sæle, synthist and programmer Reidar Skår and drummer Stein Inge Brækhus. Male singer Odd Nordstoga delivers six songs, and there are also vocals from Berit Opheim and Unni Løvlid. Seglem, depending on who he’s playing with, at times works on the wilder edges of musical exploration (a recent collaboration in London involved a player of bowed bicycle-wheel) but this album is in no way “difficult”, it’s full of structured songs, melodiousness and interesting grainy, hefty and spacious textures.


© 2003 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 -