Norway
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 ...
aleks.sierz
Today’s Britons are a minor miracle of globalised taste. Typically, we are amazingly eclectic: we eat curry and sushi, read Swedish novels or South American magic realists, dress like Italians, drive German cars, listen to world music. Our houses are full of Scandinavian design. Our favourite films are as likely to be made in China or Afghanistan as in Hollywood. So, watching the British premiere of a new play by Norwegian Jon Fosse directed by French theatre legend Patrice Chéreau, one is compelled to ask: why are we so suspicious of foreign drama?One reason must be aesthetics: we are so Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Viscera, the new album by Norway’s Jenny Hval, is a striking, often disturbing, surreal examination of how the body can take control, winning out over thought. Hval enfolds her explicit, literature-inspired lyrics in music that suddenly shifts from the impressionistic to the surging. Her voice can be disquietingly detached, narrating, as she puts it, “a partly uncomfortable listen”.Jenny Hval was a highlight of February’s by:Larm festival. Live in Oslo, the interplay between her, Håvard Volden and Kyrre Lastad – both of whom have backgrounds in improvisational music – brought to mind Lorca- Read more ...
Joe Muggs
While rumours of the album's demise may well have been premature, the digital age certainly does present increasing challenges when it comes to getting punters to keep and treasure music. Of course, really it all went wrong with the CD: those irritating plastic cases with hinges and catches guaranteed to snap off and get hoovered up, the booklets you have to squint to read, the discs that slide under car seats or behind radiators. Even “deluxe collectors' editions” were never going to be all that glorious compared to a big slab of vinyl or two and a lavish gatefold record sleeve. MP3s might Read more ...
David Nice
We’re talking in Berlin for two reasons: Andrew Litton has just renewed his contract with the Bergen Philharmonic – he’ll see out at least 12 years as the Norwegian orchestra’s principal conductor – and they’ve now reached the holiest of holies on their European tour, the Philharmonie. The long-term relationship is rare enough, given the musical chairs of today’s higher-paid international conductors, though not unique. Yet it seems to me that what they have together probably is - and I can say, hand on heart, that the Bergen/Litton Berlin concert knocked spots off the one time I heard the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Pål Moddi Knutsen is from Senja, an island off north Norway’s west coast. Inside the Arctic Circle, it’s so far north as to be all but adjacent to the borders with Sweden and Finland. Due east, Murmansk is less than half the distance of Oslo. It’s no surprise that Moddi’s debut album evokes solitude, the endless light, the unbroken night and the contemplation that has to come with the territory.Accordion is his lead instrument. He also plays acoustic guitar. Floriography was produced in Reykjavik by Valgeir Sigurðssun, who has filled out the sound with gentle strings, pattering percussion, Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Kinoteka, the adventurous Polish film festival, opened last night with a gala screening at the Curzon Renoir of veteran director Jerzy Skolimowski’s Essential Killing, a film that has provoked some vicious responses. The Observer said it was “deeply silly”, one usually fairly reliable film blogger (Shades of Caruso) was “murderously angry at having my time wasted in such a careless manner. It has no allegorical dimension, no coherent metaphorical throughline, no momentum, no narrative point, no political message, no aesthetic merit… no energy, no wit or dread or suspense or cathartic Read more ...