'Looking On Darkness' is a fascinating debut album by Frode Haltli of contemporary Scandinavian music written for the accordion, four of the five pieces being premiere recordings. Haltli, born 1975 near Trondheim in Norway, has played accordion across all the idioms. He is a new kind of player, as comfortable in a traditional folk or avant-garde jazz setting as he is in new music. He was first heard on ECM with Trygve Seim's experimental group The Source earlier this year. In contemporary performance Haltli is undoubtedly a trailblazer: three of these pieces are dedicated to him. The selection of material is most attractively presented. Danish composer Bent Sorensen, whose own New Series album 'Birds and Bells' launched a plethora of rave reviews, contributes the typically poignant and melancholy title track. Finnish composer Magnus Lindberg has passed through the stage of being an angry young man of contemporary composition (early pieces cited the influence of the Clash and Einsturzende Neubauten alongside more "legitimate" new music forebears!) to write "kinetic music" of great persuasiveness. Recently the acclaimed South Bank festival of his music and Oliver Knussen's Deutsche Grammophon 20/21 CD intensified interest in the composer. Haltli has worked with closely and often with Lindberg - here represented by Jeux d'anches. Similarly-named Swede Per Magnus Lindborg's Bombastic SonoSofisms is inspired by Bertrand Russell and the Greek philosophers. Playful rather than "bombastic", it moves with a sometimes jazz-like pulse, while Lament by Norwegian Asbjorn Schaatun is beautiful and elegiac, atonal yet also romantic. The album's centrepiece is Gagaku Variations by Maja Ratkje who, like Haltli, is another young multi-talent active on many fronts. Her compositions have won prizes in Norway, Holland and France. She's also an improviser and lead singer of the electronics/noise band Spunk, which has three albums on Rune Grammofon. Gagaku Variations, written for Haltli and the renowned all female Vertavo String Quartet, intuitively combines elements of Western and Japanese music, and is by turns contemplative and forceful. One critic has drawn comparisons with Stravinsky and Xenakis. Recorded 2001 Personnel: Frode Haltli (accordion), Vertavo String Quartet: Oyvor Volle, Berit Cardas (violin), Henninge Landaas (viola), Bjog Vaernes (cello)
