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Accordionist and composer Frode Haltli follows up last year\u2019s acclaimed Hubrorelease, \u2018Avant Folk\u2019, 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, \u2018Border Woods\u2019 is both folkier and more \u2018avant\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
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And what a band it is. Alongside Frode Haltli on accordion, Emilia Amper on nyckelharpa (Sweden\u2019s national instrument, a centuries-old chordophone, or keyed fiddle) makes for a perfect partnership. The two instruments are so alike in timbre that when played in\u00a0unison it is often difficult to tell which is which or who is who, while the resonance of the nyckelharpa\u2019s sympathetic strings can make it sound uncannily like a Hardanger fiddle. To confuse things further, Haltli\u2019s accordion can so skilfully imitate the characteristics of a fiddle that, when heard in chorus, the instrumental voices recall a mini string-section. Conversely, they can sound like two accordions, too. Both instrumentalists are virtuosi who routinely work across different genres. Frode Haltli, who has recorded for ECM as well as Hubro, has been playing accordion since early childhood, while Emilia Amper, who comes from Torsas in South east Sweden, is another prodigy, who began the nyckelharpa at age ten. In 2011 she was voted \u201cworld champion\u201d of her instrument. \u2018In Folk Style\u2019 (2L), the album she recorded with Trondheim Soloists and Gjermund Larsen in 2010, won the Norwegian Spellemannspris and was nominated for two Grammys.<\/span><\/p>\n Alongside the two-pronged, front-line attack of the traditional folk instruments played by Frode Haltli and Emilia Amper, Hakon Stene and Eirik Raude provide far more than the colour and \u2018flavouring’ that a percussionist\u2019s role is sometimes reduced to. They are also significant leaders and musical personalities in their own right: Hakon Stene is a Hubro solo artist (with the highly praised \u2018Lush Laments for Lazy Mammal\u2019), as well as with the influential percussion group asamisimasa, with whom he won a Spellemannspris; Eirik Raude has been a resident percussionist with the Oslo Philharmonic, and guest soloist with Berlin Philharmonic and Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra, as well as collaborating with leading improvisers including Arve Henriksen.<\/p>\n Playing different yet complementary kits that include mallet instruments (vibraphone, marimba), tuned and untuned drums, plus various objects to be banged or shaken, Stene and Raude in many ways determine the overall shape and character of the album. You could even say that \u2018Border Woods\u2019 begins and ends with them. Although all six compositions are written by Frode Haltli, the opening track, \u2018Wind Through Aspen Leaves\u2019, emerges very slowly out of an atmospheric rumble of cymbals, while in the closing piece, \u2018Quietly the Language Dies\u2019, each percussionist plays six tuned wine glasses to produce an eerie, glass harmonica drone. Bookended as it is by these two avowedly experimental-sounding pieces, \u2018Border Woods\u2019 definitely becomes far more \u2018avant\u2019 than \u2018folk\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThe percussionists played on glasses tuned in quarter-tones, while Emilia played a quarter-tone tuned tenor nyckelharpa, and I used a quarter-toned tuned accordion\u201d, says Frode Haltli of \u2018Quietly the Language Dies’. \u201cIt\u2019s the same instrument I used on the track \u2018Kingo\u2019 on \u2018Avant Folk\u2019. I had it tuned in Cairo years ago, with some notes tuned to Arabic scales. The fun thing is that it fits so well with Emilia\u2019s harp, where some notes are tuned in quarter-tones too, but intended for Scandinavian traditional music. The result is some archaic sounding music from who knows where!\u201d<\/p>\n If \u2018Border Woods\u2019 begins and ends with experimental soundscaping, the middle sections contain some of the most joyfully rocking and riffing, folk-based grooves imaginable. Accordion and nyckelharpa are locked into a symbiotic partnership where it\u2019s impossible to tell who is leading and who is following. The initiative seems to swap so quickly from instrument to instrument, and from what sounds like a sea shanty, to a jig or reel, to a snatch of what could be French cafe music or a minimalist piece by Steve Reich, that it\u2019s impossible to keep count. Meanwhile, the percussionists do their thing, sometimes complementing, sometimes appearing to undercut or work against the text, inserting an essential element of unpredictability.<\/p>\n This sense of unpredictability is something that Frode Haltli has remarked upon. “I listened through the whole master-tape the other day, realising that it is probably very difficult to categorise this music for new listeners\u201d, he admits. “But I like it!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n Accordionist and composer Frode Haltli follows up last year\u2019s acclaimed Hubrorelease, \u2018Avant Folk\u2019, 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, \u2018Border Woods\u2019 is both folkier and more \u2018avant\u2019 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.<\/p>\n