Recording of the Week, Erlend Apneseth - Fragmentarium

Erlend Apneseth is a Norwegian composer and master of the Hardingfele, a stringed instrument which, on the surface, resembles a more ornate violin, often decorated with folk art and inlaid with mother of pearl. Closer inspection reveals that on top of the usual four strings of a fiddle it also has four resonating strings underneath the bridge which serve to enrich the sound, making it seem larger. Apneseth studied the Hardingfele at Norway’s Ole Bull Akademiet, the National Folk Music Institute, and went on to win the National Contest for Traditional Music in 2012. He clearly has a deep knowledge and feeling for folk music, and yet his recording projects present an artist with a thirst to explore improvisation, jazz, and experimentation in its widest sense, all of which informs his latest album on Hubro, Fragmentarium. Here he has brought together a cannily chosen ensemble, made up of guitarist Stein Urheim, pianist Anja Lauvdal, Fredrik Luhr Dietrichson on double bass, Ida Løvli Hidle on accordion and percussion, and multi-instrumentalist Hans Hulbækmo, all of whom are well respected in their own rite.

There’s an appealing sense of openness and curiosity to these pieces, with sections that have been composed feeling organic next to the more improvisatory parts. Opener ‘Gangar’ lays out this approach, as the instruments gradually file in around a simple motif played on a borderline cheesy-sounding bell preset on a synth (don’t worry - it works!). There’s something of the ragged, garden shed approach to production that Tom Waits started mining on Frank’s Wild Years, albeit shot through with deeper folk roots. The textures build up to something akin to a New Orleans stomp, but then Apneseth allows things to calm down towards the end of the track, with Urheim’s nostalgic, mildly distorted electric guitar becoming the focus. Du fallande jord is in a more traditional folk vein, with Apneseth’s aching melody on Hardingfele given pointillistic support from Laudvals’ piano, and drones from Hidle’s accordion. Dietrichson’s bass, captured nicely in the production, keeps the slow, processional atmosphere going, and gives Hulbækmo plenty to spring off, displaying his inventiveness on a stripped-down kit.

Even when the group venture into more orthodox electro-improv territory on Gruvene - double bass scrapings and abstract electronic sounds all present and correct - they never sound token, or neglect the playfulness that characterises much of the album. As in the best progressive rock, there is always that sense that the music is taking us somewhere. In fact towards the end of the album is a gem of a track called ‘Det mørknar’ which has that goose-bump inducing, something’s-about-to-happen stillness that recalls Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes’ on Meddle. At 34 minutes the record feels perfectly formed, with novel combinations of instruments keeping our attention at every turn, as on the title track, where the dark mood lifts for a section featuring Jew’s harp and Hardingfele. Even the washes of distorted electronic noise sound absolutely in place; throughout the album the synthetic enhances the acoustic, and although I initially had minor misgivings about the sampled voices in the track ‘Fragmentarium’, they made perfect sense on subsequent listens. If you were also blown away by Godspeed You Black Emperor in the late nineties, I’d implore you to check out tracks like ‘No, etterpå’ which has a similar knack for painting human beings into vast, cold canvasses reflecting the unknowable darkness that lies both outside and within. If I think about it too hard I could get riled up that a brilliantly crafted album like Fragmentarium will probably only reach a fraction of the audience it so richly deserves, so give it a listen.