It is quite a coup combining the post-folk talents of Erlend Apneseth‘s trio with the imaginative vocal freewheeling of Maja Ratkje.
They initially collaborated live in 2022 with that performance being recorded and then used as base material for an album that wanders through icy backwaters and winter campfires with a constant view of a star-flecked sky ranging above them.
It could be the wind or it could be voices opening the album; a keening, elemental distant swell, something seen or heard faintly in a faraway glade. We make our way towards it and spy the ancient instruments intone slowly and tremulously, and a roll of thunder embodies a warning of things yet to come. Water seeps in threatening to engulf as Maja’s wordless utterances throw you somewhere completely new, just the Hardanger fiddle and bells indicating we are still within the warm reach of the campfire.
The voice is a strangely removed vehicle, distancing itself from any familiar traditions, the scattered outbursts and tongue drops giving the impression of possession. It is strident at points and then dissolving in the sudden light, a sway of fiddle and found sounds welcoming and drawing the voice into an unexpected embrace. The sound of a train and the cyclical drone of the fiddle evokes the subdued melancholy of Godspeed while further scampers push into dreamlike territory, Maja’s voice treading the liminal space between dreaming and waking. There is freedom in Øyvind Hegg-Lunde‘s percussion that evokes travel across frozen terrain, the link-up loose but prone to an unseen build, ending in a gathering tumult, an hypnotic groove interspersed with found sounds and Maja’s crazed, almost apocalyptic delivery. It lifts the lid on the piece, lighting up the sky with shrieks and hollers as the trio try to dampen down the rage.The more ghostly shapeshifting tribal utterances of “Fuglane II” are the antithesis; the sound of satellites in the vastness, way out above the campfire turmoil. The sense of occasion overwhelms the listener and draws intuitively from the performers, finding a greater sense of communion. The fiddle-enhanced album closer is an ambient lull, a slow drawing of the curtain across the emotional hubbub of the past half an hour.
It feels like there is more to give in this unique collaboration; but hopefully this won’t be the last of what is a dramatic and heartfelt journey.
-Mr Olivetti-
