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Accordionist and composer Frode Haltli follows up last year’s acclaimed Hubrorelease, ‘Avant Folk’, with a smaller-scale yet equally inspired album that is built once again on the combination of traditional Nordic folk forms with influences drawn from world music and contemporary composition/improvisation. In some ways, ‘Border Woods’ is both folkier and more ‘avant’ than its predecessor. The reduction in the size of the ensemble, from a dectet to a quartet, creates a corresponding increase in intensity, while Haltli frequently divides the unit further, using the two matched pairs of performers separately for a number of duo sequences. As the band expands and contracts in response to the demands of each tune, the music veers from cool, meditative explorations at the outer reaches of sound, to full-on pentatonic grooves and folk-rocky, foot-tapping jams.