A Closer Listen
Collage is an apt name for an album that creates its own sonic world through field recordings, unusual instrumentation and vivid vocal experimentation. The team-up of Norwegian trio Erlend Apneseth Trio & Maja S.K. Ratkje began as an “impromptu concert” that was converted into a studio version, “improvisations turned compositions.” The sonic freshness still screams improvisation (and one track does include screaming), but the lush backdrops are evidence of precise planning. Apneseth’s Hardangar fiddle remains in full force, but the overall effect is phantasmagorical: a group of Gypsies traveling through the pages of an illustrated fairy tale.
Ratkje’s voice is the album’s first sound, a siren call in the forest, beckoning one to enter. Percussion rattles, chimes sound, and a swell of music submerges the singer. Synth bubbles like gas escaping from tar pits. The Gypsy band passes a stream, sets up shop, begins to play even louder. A sonic maelstrom develops like a tea kettle about to explode, but just before the breaking point, the heat is reduced. Ratkje reappears in “Fjernklang,” engaging in playful onomatopoeia over fiddle and sheep bells. Soon she is counting and cooing, singing and skipping, wrestling with rough consonants, trying them out on her tongue, tallying them with an adding machine.
Church bells toll in the distance, even though there are no folks to attend. The farmer is fixing his house, hammering away, no time to pray, jealous of the good wood in the pews, good wood better than the Good Word. Children chatter at his feet, oblivious to the falling nails, pausing only when the train rattles by, a break in the action, a highlight of the day. Animals peer from rail windows, but the sun is going down; in the last car there seem to be ghosts. In “Kvi søve du,” they begin to beckon, and the children run inside, while the farmer’s wife crosses herself. The wytches are in the woods. The farmer regrets his jealousy. And the band plays on.
A strange ceremony is taking place in the copse. None of the uninvited dare to attend. They hear the tribal drums, the tambourines, the shrieks and yelps. Shutters are closed; chests are crossed; the fearful remain inside, while the free revel and spin. A murder of crows circles and refuses to dissipate, matching cackles with caws. Ratkje surrenders to sibilants, summoning snakes.
Then the morning arrives. There are tracks in the mud, but no blood on the leaves. Bells are re-hung, dangling from horse-drawn carts, ringing as the wheels cross uneven ruts. The fiddle bids a fond farewell. The farmer thanks his absent god. The farmer’s wife asks, what if I had joined them? To the end of her life, in the middle of the night, she will still hear chimes. (Richard Allen)
Fri Oct 20 00:01:15 GMT 2023