Norwegian trio Building Instrument – Mari Kvien Brunvoll, Åsmund Weltzien, Øyvind Hegg-Lunde – returns with new sounds full of dreamy pop hooks, sparkling synth textures and beguiling lyrics about the moon, spirit, animals and the experience of simply being alive. As the pop sensibility is filtered through an aesthetic of playful experiment, the gorgeous, brightly hued tunes and seductively shiny textures share house room with avant-garde sound-art. If you want to hear delicious ear candy intersected by spooky instrumental vignettes or a brief snippet of a car engine stalling, here’s where to find it. The result is a compulsively listenable album whose deceptively poppy surface unpeels to reveal a whole underworld of intensely-worked immersive improvisation.
Building Instrument is so original a group that comparisons don’t really work. If you really wanted to insist, avant-pop icons Annette Peacock and even Kate Bush might give an unreliable indication of the type of vocal territory surveyed, while the beats, synths and samples could recall the nostalgia-for-the-Nineties futurism of College or re-imagined video game soundtracks. But listen to the completely out-there rhythms and riffs of standout track ’Saunte’, which uses sampled ukulele sounds and treated vocals against an urgent pitter-patter of electronic percussion and de-tuned strings. It’s immediately clear that a) no one else sounds remotely like this. And b) it’s entirely successful on any number of levels.
The album, which arrives a decade after Building Instrument’s self-titled debut in 2014, and more than seven years since the acclaimed ‘Mangelen Min’, was in part a response to a particular commission. “We were invited to make completely new music for EKKO festival, the electronic music festival in Bergen, in 2022”, says Mari Kvien Brunvoll, who as well as singing, plays multiple instruments. “This invitation may have pushed us in a bit more of an electronic direction than previously. We extended the instrumentation by using even more synths, samplers and electronic drums than on the earlier albums, and it’s this material that makes up most of ‘Månen, Armadillo’.”
All three members of the trio worked both together and separately to develop the tracks. Øyvind Hegg-Lunde and Mari Kvien Brunvoll wrote the melodic material, and Øyvind edited all of the recordings. “It began with each member contributing initial sketches, which were then collectively developed in the studio, says drummer and percussionist Øyvind Hegg-Lunde. “Then, after the initial studio recordings, we worked separately in our own studios to layer new elements onto the tracks, before the material was performed as a commissioned piece at the Ekko Festival. Following the festival, we refined our favorite pieces and collaborated with producer Jørgen Træen, bringing a fresh creative perspective to the final recordings”.
As to where the ideas for the music come from, synth wizard Åsmund Weltzien explains the breadth of their musical influences. “We are inspired by all kinds of music: electronica, folk, improvisation, and contemporary “serious” music”, he says. “We combine existing synths with our own samples of instruments and use them to create interesting combinations of sound. For instance, there is a sample of Øyvind learning to play the Sabar drums in Gambia on Sabar/Gull. Our colleague Erlend Apneseth’s Hardanger fiddle is also sampled and spread out on my synths, while Mari plays with, like, a milk frother on her glockenspiel on some tracks. In addition to her vocals she plays and then manipulates various acoustic instruments, while Øyvind mixes acoustic and electronic drums on most of the album.”
The choice of the new album’s title also has a role to play in any assessment of its contents. The moon (or månen in Norwegian) in question is both a powerful symbol in its own right, and one of the most emblematic recurring images – la luna! – in the work of the Spanish poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca. He became an important reference point for the lyrics, with two tracks based on translations from his poems. As regards the Armadillo, it’s best to let Mari explain: “The armadillo becomes a metaphor for the human condition, with its hard exterior protecting its soft interior. It looks almost militant with its armour, but also has both physical and emotional vulnerabilities, like all of us have. It’s a night animal, and we picture it with its nose down in the ground and we wonder if sometimes if it takes a look up at the moon, taking in the big night sky.” Apart from the two songs based on Lorca, Mari writes all of the album’s lyrics herself. They, are, she says: “Depictions of different moments in a lifetime, big and small. ‘Da/Innom’ is about a mother’s attempt to answer her kids’ questions of where she will go when one day she will die. ’Saunte’ is about those small moments, like the sudden feeling you get of being alive when you least expect it.”
Music that satisfies body, mind and soul; banging electronica and sweet pop whimsicality. ‘Månen, Armadillo’ makes perfect sense. Recorded at Duper Studio, Bergen, produced by Building Instrument, and mixed by the legendary Jørgen Træen, it sounds every bit as good as it should do.
