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A powerful atmospheric presence The meditative music of Slagr – whose latest album,\u00a0\u2018DIRR\u2019, was recorded and mixed by Andreas Mj\u00f8s of Jaga Jazzist, the producer of two previous Slagr albums – provides a portal for the imagination to\u00a0roam free: a magical sound-world whose simple melodies and drones combine with an audio-palette of austere yet beautiful instrumental textures to provoke an infinite sense of openness capable of\u00a0conveying a myriad of meanings. The instruments themselves – Hardanger fiddle, cello, vibraphone and glass\u00a0harmonica – imply a measure of the music\u2019s reach, from the folk tradition to renaissance\u00a0polyphony to the contemporary avant-garde. It\u2019s an aesthetic where the humble, home-spun legacy of Nordic fiddle tunes and church music meets the reticent yet sensuous minimalism of Morton Feldman\u00a0amid a mysterious liminal soundscape where what is heard sometimes seems like it\u2019s on the very edge of consciousness, as if one is half awake and half in dreams, the music half there and half not. \u2018DIRR\u2019, while maintaining a satisfying aesthetic unity that allows the album to be perceived as a thematic whole, like a suite or a cycle of related pieces, is also remarkably various. The interweaving of the respective\u00a0instruments\u2019 at times strikingly similar-sounding timbres, the wide range of noises each instrument makes, and the constant alteration or exchange between the \u2018lead\u2019 voice or voices from track to track creates a continual\u00a0sense of adventure and surprise that is very appealing. We may not know what the music of Slagr is about – if music can be said to be ‘about’ anything – but it conveys a powerful atmospheric presence, a sort of aural\u00a0spirit-photograph or record of the spaces – both internal and external – the music seems to move you through as it plays.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The meditative music of Slagr – whose latest album,\u00a0\u2018DIRR\u2019, was recorded and mixed by Andreas Mj\u00f8s of Jaga Jazzist, the producer of two previous Slagr albums – provides a portal for the imagination to\u00a0roam free: a magical sound-world whose simple melodies and drones combine with an audio-palette of austere yet beautiful instrumental textures to provoke an infinite sense of openness capable of\u00a0conveying a myriad of meanings.<\/p>\n
While it\u00a0may be reductive to see Slagr\u2019s music as quintessentially northern or Nordic, it does fit the Danish artist Asger Jorn\u2019s conception of the north as \u201cthe dream centre of Europe\u201d. This is music that drifts along\u00a0like clouds, changing shape almost imperceptively as it goes. It also requires very careful attention from the listener, as one adapts one\u2019s ears to a microscopic rate of change where the slow drag of a\u00a0horsehair bow across bare strings can suggest the harmonic flutter of a Mongolian throat singer\u2019s music of the spheres, and where the disturbance of air around the lip of a glass half-filled with water creates\u00a0a spectral hum that seems to become part of the very atmosphere, like sonic weather. But while the music of this very environmentally-aware trio (who in 2016 contributed to \u2018Melting\u2019, Amund Sj\u00f8lie Sveen\u2019s theatrical performance piece on the theme of global warming), inevitably carries strong associations\u00a0of the natural world – one thinks, say, of a vast forest or tundra landscape whose open spaces represent a logical imaginative response to the wide open spaces of the music itself – there are important cultural associations\u00a0too, not least with cinema and the filmic.<\/p>\n
On the present album’s wonderfully pliant opening track, aur, Amund Sj\u00f8lie Sveen\u2019s glass harmonica drones can suggest the distressed piano-shimmers of Roy Budd\u2019s introductory\u00a0theme to the cult thriller \u2018Get Carter\u2019, or John Barry\u2019s iconic cimbalon-strings on \u2018The Ipcress File\u2019, together with their well-attested mutual influence on the creepy Theremin opening to Portishead\u2019s \u2018Glory Box\u2019. Indeed, one\u00a0of the great attractions of Slagr’s imaginative open-ness is the potential it holds for hearing allusive echoes of all sorts of things, from sleigh bells to seances. And the idea of a seance – the conjuring up of a particular spirit\u00a0or atmosphere – might be a relevant reference point. There is an inescapable sense of the uncanny here, a Gothic evocation of rituals in the dark that is very effective whether the music is listened to attentively or used as a\u00a0kind of subtle ambient ectoplasm floating in the background.<\/p>\n
\u2018DIRR\u2019, while maintaining a satisfying aesthetic unity that allows the album to be perceived as a thematic whole, like a suite or a cycle of related pieces, is also remarkably various. The interweaving of the respective\u00a0instruments\u2019 at times strikingly similar-sounding timbres, the wide range of noises each instrument makes, and the constant alteration or exchange between the \u2018lead\u2019 voice or voices from track to track creates a continual\u00a0sense of adventure and surprise that is very appealing. We may not know what the music of Slagr is about – if music can be said to be ‘about’ anything – but it conveys a powerful atmospheric presence, a sort of aural\u00a0spirit-photograph or record of the spaces – both internal and external – the music seems to move you through as it plays. Konserter 8. februar – Bergen Ny musikk 15. februar – Oslo Riksscenen 7. mars – Oslo Nynorskens hus (liggekonsert) 8. mars – Notodden 14. mars – Trondheim<\/p>\n
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The meditative music of Slagr – whose latest album,\u00a0\u2018DIRR\u2019, was recorded and mixed by Andreas Mj\u00f8s of Jaga Jazzist, the producer of two previous Slagr albums – provides a portal for the imagination to\u00a0roam free<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":34933,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[36],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-35294","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-hubro","7":"product_shipping_class-cddvd-shipping","8":"uni_artist_tag-amund-sjolie-sveen","9":"uni_artist_tag-andreas-mjos","10":"uni_artist_tag-anne-hytta","11":"uni_artist_tag-katrine-schiott","12":"uni_artist_tag-slagr","13":"uni_main_artist_tag-slagr","14":"uni_artist_genre-contemporary-music","15":"uni_artist_genre-folk-music","17":"first","18":"instock","19":"taxable","20":"shipping-taxable","21":"purchasable","22":"product-type-variable","23":"has-default-attributes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/35294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=35294"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=35294"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grappa.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=35294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}