By Sammy Stein

Norway is sending lots of good issues to the world. Naaljos Ljom contains
Anders Sundsteigen Hana on jaw harp, langeleik (Norwegian stringed
instrument), fiddle, and guitar, and Morten Johan Olsen Joh on analogue
synths, drum machines, and SuperCollider. The duo has performed at quite a few
festivals together with the Rewire Competition in The Hague, Unsound Competition in
Krakow, Fri Resonans in Trondheim, Elevate Competition in Graz, Sonic Protest
in Paris, UH get together in Budapest, Motvindfestivalen in Oslo, Tuvas Blodklubb
at Riksscena, Great World in Stavanger, Fanø Free People Competition, and
extra. They launch Naaljos Ljom 2 on 1 ^st December on Motvind
Information.

The music is a fusion of microtonal folks music and digital sounds and
noise. The musicians used supplies they discovered at recycling stations and
vintage centres and united the sounds created by these outdated, discarded,
misshapen objects, with tonally asymmetrical and rhythmically straight
angles. Nicely, that is what the PR notes say anyhow. What Naaljos Ljom has
truly performed, and which comes throughout within the music, is to create layered,
textural, and multi-dimensional layers of sound that kind a collective combine
that feels as if it attracts parts of historic Nordic tradition and fashionable
musical nuances collectively.

They’ve dived deep into the significant aspect of objects and sounds and
merged them. They’ve taken phrases of people music, parts, and textures
from quite a lot of sources, and from the eclectic nature of their findings –
each sonic and bodily, they’ve developed music that is sensible, but
accommodates surprises and surprising textures and shapes.

All through the music, a connection to their origins and the origins of the
music that influences this launch is prevalent. There’s a sense of
desolate, windswept mountains, boulders rolling, deep, grass-layered
valleys, and sheer cliffs the place a flip within the incorrect path might even see you
plummeting tons of of ft towards a rock-strewn ground. It’s tough to
put into phrases, however the music appears to create its personal setting and
panorama – somewhat as if the weather have come to life – these darkish, chilly,
imperfect, tossed-away objects, by some means have united with sonic concepts from
the previous and current and discovered new lives, and objective. Utilizing folks music
means the musicians search atonal nuances often solely current in vocal
numbers due to the imitations of devices (and gamers) however right here,
they discover these microtones utilizing a variance of digital and bodily
means.

The album opens with music underneath a assertion from Eivend Groven, a
Norwegian music theorist and composer with a background steep in folks
music. The assertion is from a radio program broadcast in 1966 with the
title “False or pure in our folks music? Lecture by Eivind Groven with
musical examples”. He explains (roughly translated because it is in
Norwegian). “At present we’re going to hear music, not carried out on an strange
organ or piano. These are folks tones, containing pitches or intervals mendacity
exterior the same old tonal system.” He’s honoured later within the launch on the
tracks, Tolvtalsvisa” and “To visetoner etter Eivind Groven og Ola Brenno
(Two songs after Eivind Groven and Ola Brenno).”

They use totally different rhythms, repeated usually as in ‘Fiskaren’ and over these,
the digital music provides textural ranges and percussive variations. Or
they use a mixture of rhythms and patterns, most taken instantly from folks
songs, and create a brand new means of listening to the music.

Conventional tunes from totally different villages, impressed by musicians reminiscent of
Andres Okay. Rysstad, Torleiv H. Bjørgum, Ivar Fuglestad, Gunnar Austegard,
Sigurd Brokke, Daniel Sandén-Warg, Anders E. Røine, Thov Wetterhus, and
Kenneth Lien, comply with with twists utilizing digital and sounds created on
totally different surfaces. They even embrace their tackle a folks dance – or
Halling – impressed by Trygve Okay. Vågen. They copy the melodic materials from
distinctive Nineteen Thirties recordings by Groven and Brenno, (extra of which the label
(Motvind Information) guarantees subsequent yr.

The discharge is neither folks, jazz, or classical Norwegian music however free,
improvised in lots of locations, and wholly impressed by the distinctive tradition of
Norway and its historic music.

From the weirdly ethereal ‘Foss Fugelstad’ (Fugelstad waterfall) to the
folks imbued ‘Rammeslatt,’ the album is unique, totally different, and a journey
that hyperlinks fashionable music notion to the historic music of the previous.