Ian Carr & Niklas Roswall – Time Flies
Westpark Music – 11 January 2019
Time Flies – doesn’t it just. It is 15 years since English guitarist Ian Carr and Swedish nyckelharpist Niklas Roswall made Step on it! their first album together. The follow up continues their investigation of the possibilities of what can be played on a guitar and a nyckelharpa. Time Flies renews the unusual and intriguing soundscapes heard on the earlier album but also extends the variety of aural delights on offer.
I first came across Ian Carr’s wonderful guitar playing around 1993 when he was with The Kathryn Tickell Band. He has since recorded and toured with Kate Rusby, Eddi Reader and Kris Drever (frequently entertaining us with his dry humour into the bargain), playing recently on both Kris’s If Wishes Were Horses and Eddi Reader’s Cavalier album. It may seem now as if Scandinavian tunes and collaborations are everywhere – The Rheingans Sisters, This Is How We Fly, Slow Moving Clouds, String Sisters, Snowflake Trio, to name a few – but it wasn’t always that way and Ian Carr must bear some responsibility. A single track, back in 1995, of two Polskas (a form of dance tune common to Nordic countries) on Ian and piano accordionist Karen Tweed’s Shhh album was followed quickly by the formation of the SWÅP comprised of Ian and Karen, together with two Swedish fiddle players, Ola Bäckström and Carina Normansson. They made four consistently brilliant albums together between 1997 and 2005 exploring a fusion of many different genres, including traditional Swedish, English, Breton and Irish music. Ian ended up moving to Sweden and has collaborated with numerous Swedish musicians since.
Niklas Roswall started out on violin aged 10 but soon switched to the nyckelharpa because he was fascinated by its rich timbre and the range of possibilities it opens up. He is a nyckelharpa World Champion and plays in the trio Ahlberg, Ek & Roswall, who won Group of the Year at the Swedish Folk & World Music Gala in 2016. Nyckelharpa literally means ‘key harp’. It is bowed like a fiddle but has both keys to change the pitch and a set of sympathetic strings which resonate with the other strings but aren’t bowed. It has many similarities to the hurdy-gurdy and both the Hardanger fiddle and Viola d ́amore also have sympathetic strings. It has a much fuller sound than a standard fiddle and can sound very different on different tunes.
Asbestos Suite, written by Ian, starts off proceedings at a lively dash with almost an old-time fiddle feel. The ‘hurry-up’ sense in the tune is perhaps explained by it being inspired by playing in an asbestos-contaminated hotel – obviously somewhere to get the job done and get out quick.
A traditional polska titled Cedervall, was played in generations of two families of fiddlers and organists from Skåne in Southwest Sweden and the version here is from the Cedervall family but includes a few phrases from a different polska from the other family, the Blomgrens. The tune is distinctly different from most polskas I’ve heard before and sounds not too far away from a courtly classical piece in the J.S. Bach mould.
Ichiban, written by Niklas, is a different kind of polska again. The accent is on the first beat in the bar which makes for a frenetic, stomping ride which is great fun to listen to but difficult to imagine how the legs would respond to on the dance floor.
Ian’s humour is often behind the inspiration for his tune titles. One track is called Step on it Sven and was the tune that provided the title for the duos previous 2003 album but didn’t appear on that album because says Ian: ‘our quality control department deemed that we needed a few more years to practice it so we are pleased to include it here’. And the story behind the title, again best told in Ian’s own words: ‘Rally driver Stig Bloomqvist was interviewed during a race by a terrified broadcaster who hilariously forgot the name of his interviewee, at one point blurting out Step on it Sven! It’s a great tune, driven (no pun intended) by Ian’s amazingly varied rhythms and a swirling playing from Niklas which at times sound not unlike he’s playing a set of pipes.
In a similarly humorous vein, Club Anticlimax, co-written by Ian with Chris Wood (they both played on The Two Duos Quartet’s 1999 album Half as happy as we, together with Karen Tweed and Andy Cutting) and unsurprisingly the most English sounding tune on the album, comes from Ian’s misreading of the logo on a van, not long after he arrived in Sweden. Turns out Anticimex is a Swedish pest control firm (Ian misread their logo and imagined it to be a club)! The tune is built on sets of ascending phrases, followed by faster descending phrases played on guitar and nyckelharpa – a form of musical snake and ladders at varying speeds.
Scandinavian tunes obviously sound different to most English, Irish or Scottish tunes. SWÅP discovered that it was almost impossible to play each other’s tunes in the original style – only Irish slipjigs and polskas are basically the same kind of tune. Some have identified uneven rhythm, or asymmetrical meter, as key to the distinct sound – which makes a lot of sense as it is exactly the edginess of most tunes that stand out. The combination of guitar and nyckelharpa makes for a fascinating exploration of the Swedish branch of those forms.
Time Flies, the tune that gives the album its title, is not it seems a reference to the passage of time between the duos two albums but rather a tune Ian wrote a few years for his partner Maria for their tenth anniversary. It is an appropriately joyful tune in which you can hear both the affection and the celebration.
A good number of slower, more reflective tracks provide a pleasing overall sense of balance on the album. Kvarnbergsschottis, the first part of which Niklas wrote in Ian’s kitchen in Kvarnberget, is my favourite track. Written by Niklas, it begins with gentle, flowing guitar, then joined by beautiful nyckelharpa playing which unavoidably evokes images of desolate, snowy Nordic landscapes. Don’t be at all surprised if this exceptional track pops up in the next must-see Scandinavian TV crime series. Another polska, Majpolska, again written by Niklas, further illustrates the variety of tunes that musical form can encompass. Named after ‘the most bittersweet of all chords’, the major seventh, the tune is slower, with a melancholic sense of ending. One for the last dance, as the well the album’s final track.
Ian Carr and Niklas Roswell’s new album will grab your attention and keep it. They share the writing and exchange lead instrument duties throughout on both newly written and traditional tunes. The format may be small but the sound is big and original, with interesting arrangements and lots of variation in pace and style. With lots to explore and savour, Time Flies is, like Ian Carr and Niklas Roswall, a real treasure.