Erlend Apneseth Trio – Lokk
Hubro – Out Now
Scandinavia boasts a wealth of avant-folk, free jazz and improvisational music. The fertile area where these scenes meet and intersect is represented brilliantly by the Hubro record label, whose roster includes the ambient jazz guitarist Trond Kallevåg, the spacy, proggy fusion of Stein Urheim and the deconstructed folk of Frode Haltli. But the jewel in the label’s crown is fiddle player Erlend Apneseth’s trio, which features Øyvind Hegg-Lunde on drums and guitarist Stephan Meidell. The group’s influences cover a huge range: wide-eyed, cultish freak-folk rubs shoulders with musique concrete, archival recordings flirt with modernist composition and traditional dance tunes coexist with wild and unfettered jazz.
The most recent of their three previous albums, 2019’s Salika, Molika, was recorded with the aforementioned Haltli and included elements of glitchy electronica, witchy psych-folk and even circus music. They have followed that with a new record, Lokk, that is more focussed in terms of theme but more performatively improvisational.
The focus comes from the album’s genesis: it was originally conceived as a companion piece to a performance by Norway’s FRIKAR Dance Company, and the pieces that grew out of the commission took on a life of their own as they became the basis for new improvisations. In the words of Meidell, these pieces are meant to ‘unite different extremes, connections that felt “forbidden” in one form or another.’ These forbidden connections feel like a natural development: the trio have been consistently experimental, even when using traditional material.
In practice, this has translated into an album that is more rhythmic than its predecessors, where songs are grounded in beats and electronic pulses. The improvisation occurs on top of, around and within these rhythmic structures. The plucked and bowed strings of Impedans cut through a heaving soup of beats and sci-fi electronica, and by the track’s end, the various components have somehow alchemically fused. The deep Asian-influenced groove and propulsive handclapping of Slekter provide a surprisingly apposite backdrop for the folk solos, while the disconcerting percussion and glitchy production of Linjer situate it somewhere between IDM and ambient.
Fuglane begins with fluttering minimalism and bird calls before an archival vocal sample bathes the song in equal parts weirdness and warmth. It fuses with the off-kilter dance tune Springar, which grew out of Apneseth’s melody Valdresspringar before being transformed by improvisation into a complex, echoing, multi-layered thing. The most stark example of the trio’s ability to synthesise the ancient and the modern and provide links between seemingly different cultures comes in the title track, with its patchwork of Norwegian herdswomen’s calls, bass-heavy South Asian backdrop and squalling fiddle, while the epic closing track Skimmer (the Norwegian for ‘shimmer’) begins with a melancholy fiddle solo and soon adds gently percussive plucking and a billowing sweep of background effects. The pace is controlled masterfully, like the musical equivalent of slow, yogic breathing – the overall sound is ostensibly ambient but the structure owes something to post-rock, albeit of a very improvisational kind.
As experimental as Lokk is, it is also surprisingly approachable. Melodies weave in and out of each track, guided by the propulsiveness of the rhythms, and there is something different and aurally arresting at every turn. It’s rare to hear a band creating genuinely new music with a basis in traditional forms, but Apneseth’s trio have managed it on more than one occasion. Their latest album is their most vivid and satisfying reinvention yet.
Order via Bandcamp: https://erlendapnesethtrio.bandcamp.com/
