Norway
Kieron Tyler
Although Norwegian, Ane Brun’s biggest impact has been in Sweden, where she lives. Since her last studio album, she’s toured and recorded with Peter Gabriel. Her new album again finds her diving off the expected path, throwing herself forcefully onto new musical ground.Her voice is still recognisable. Crystalline, tremulous and keening, it’s meant to bear emotion. But the aptly titled It All Starts With One might as well be a debut album. Always a stellar songwriter, Brun chose to get her material across in a familiar, largely folk-styled way. It could be the Gabriel experience that's pushed Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s almost dark. Frescoes depicting the cycle of life are barely visible. They could be shadows. Waves of sound pulse through the mausoleum of Norwegian artist Emanuel Vigeland. Fiddle player Nils Økland is feeding the 15-second delay with peals that reverberate around the space, folding back into themselves. It’s a spooky, unforgettable introduction to FolkeLarm, Oslo’s annual festival of Nordic folk music.FolkeLarm is a jolt. Not only because of it being a deep-dish serving of Nordic folk music, but also because previous visits to Oslo have found the city under half a metre of snow. Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
A few years ago – peaking in 2007 - “cosmic disco” was a brief clubland rage. It came mostly from Oslo and consisted of calm, bearded Norwegian dudes creating a fabulous psychedelic stew of groovy house, Italo-disco, and their own ineffable proggy weirdness. Where filter disco, the unkillable dance-pop sub-genre kick-started by Stardust’s “The Music Sounds Better With You”, has mostly been hugely unadventurous, relying on basic retro pilfering, cosmic disco was always marinated in the deep, druggy pulse of the best nightlife. Names such as Lindstrom, Prins Thomas and Todd Terje rightly Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The Lexington on Pentonville Road is a pub with an easy-going Deep South style. The main bar looks like the sort of place where cattle barons might relax with basque-clad floozies after a hard week kicking homesteaders off their land. Instead, however, the place has a smattering of people, mostly in their twenties, a number with large sideburns and Stooges T-shirts, listening to a New Zealander called Delaney Davidson playing solo blues.Davidson is a cross between one-man-band Son of Dave and The Cramps. He samples himself, plays off a rhythm track and drops drily amusing remarks in-between Read more ...
David Nice
Newly knighted with the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for his services to the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, American conductor and pianist Andrew Litton is a musician who believes in the nurturing of long-term orchestral relationships: eight years as music director in Bergen, with the contract recently extended to 2015, and an equal length of time before that in Dallas have reaped their rewards. In May he spoke to theartsdesk while visiting Berlin with "the other" BPO, and in August conducted a three-part Prom with the Royal Philharmonic featuring works written for Boston Symphony Orchestra Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The Blair Witch Project’s found-footage horror formula finds an unlikely new ingredient in this Norwegian phenomenon. The monsters disturbed in the woods by an amateur film crew this time are trolls, fairy-tale staples corralled by a top-secret branch of the government’s Wildlife Board, the Troll Security Service, and more particularly by hangdog chief troll hunter Hans (top Norwegian comic Otto Jespersen). “Who’s afraid of trolls?” someone asks. The implicit, bone-dry humour ensures you won’t be. But neither are you likely to forget this peculiar tale.Hans is the initial quarry of the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Although sadness currently cloaks Norway, the release of Razika’s joyful debut album might raise a few spirits. From Bergen, this all-female four-piece are school friends jointly born in 1991, hence part of the album title. Program 91 is a ska-inflected romp that would’ve been a snug fit for Rough Trade in the early Eighties. Razika weren’t even born then. The other half of the album’s title is inspired by fellow Bergen band Program 81, a ska-inflected new wave outfit formed in 1981. Razika – coined as band-speak for a cute boy - clearly aren’t shy about revealing their inspirations, Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
The National Gallery has in recent years made a speciality of examining the hitherto unexamined. Just for starters, a surprise hit some years ago was Spanish Still Lifes, 2007 saw Renoir Landscapes (who knew?), last year there was the ravishing Christen Kobke, star of the Danish Golden Age, and just this spring New York’s Ashcan School, all with committed scholarship throwing light on the internationally disregarded. In a gallery full of stormy seas, Alpine passes (with the occasional mountain goat), fast-moving streams and huge skies, two more unfamiliar geographies are on view. We may Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Certain Nordic countries are identified with particular forms of music. Norway and Finland are the home to various strands of metal. Sweden’s pop songwriters and producers are world-renowned, attracting the likes of Britney Spears to Scandinavia. Iceland homes individualists like Björk and Sigur Rõs. Denmark’s influential Mew and Efterklang capture mood like no one else. But you won’t find any of this on the new three-CD set Beginner's Guide to Scandinavia.It’s a challenging remit. Beginner's Guide to Scandinavia is part of a series of Beginner's Guides, preceded by Beginner's Guide to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Music from Norway can have moods and textures that aren’t found elsewhere. Templates are thrown away and boundaries between genres are non-existent, bringing a thrilling unpredictability. Huntsville, a three-piece with roots in improv music, jazz and folk, take a repetition rooted in Krautrock and imbue it with the organic feel of Americana – they’ve previously collaborated with members of Wilco. The opening cut of third album For Flowers, Cars and Merry Wars, the almost-19-minute title track, journeys into inner space and compresses time. Once over, the ride seems as though it’s barely begun Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
On the Jutland coast, Aarhus is Denmark’s second largest city after capital Copenhagen. Its attractive continental atmosphere is amplified by the presence of this week’s temporary population, which includes visitors from Britain, Estonia, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the US and the other Nordic countries. They’re here for SPOT, Denmark’s annual festival showcasing homegrown music. It’s a good moment as electro-popper Oh Land is making significant waves in the States. Bands like Efterklang, The Ravonettes and the seminal Mew are embedded in the international musical landscape. Of course, Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Dropped trousers, audience participation and an onstage skiffle band fronted by a singer/songwriter boasting specs by way of Buddy Holly: what has become of the National Theatre's Lyttelton auditorium? Well, let's just say that for the entire first act of One Man, Two Guvnors, it's got to be easily the giddiest theatrical address in town. And when the momentum flags, as it does somewhat after the interval, not to worry. By that point, Richard Bean's Goldoni rewrite has generated enough goodwill that you all but float home.That is, if you even feel like leaving, given a show so full of high Read more ...