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Three
years on from their very attractive debut album Ranarop, Gjallarhorn
- having declined a further Warner Finlandia contract - forge
onward with Sjofn, showing how comprehensively they can achieve
when they gather the whole process of album making and releasing
into their own hands. Jenny Wilhelms convinces ever more that
she's one of Norden's very finest singers, with wide tonal
facility from silky low register to thrilling kulning and
the time she's spent digging into archives has borne fruit
in terms both of the finding of a store of traditional material
and of a burgeoning of her own ability to create melodies
for texts.
Making big, shivering slabs of sound from acoustic instruments,
the instrumental line up, as before, comprises Christopher
Öhman's viola and mandola driving in tandem with Wilhelms'
fiddle and hardingfele, plus David Lillkvist's percussion
and, supplying the shifting-textured rhythmic-pulsed drones
that so suit in this context, didgeridoo and jew's harp player
Tommy Mansikka-Aho (who replaced Jakob Frankenhaeuser just
after the first album was recorded).
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No
bassist, but there's no sense of lack; the didges, mandola,
deeply resonant skin and udu percussion make a rich-textured
bottom end while allowing this music of lyric, melody and
rhythm to float free from specific bass harmonisation.Here's
runo-song, hymn, minuet, polska and several ballads, largely
Swedish-language but also in Finnish and Icelandic - indeed
this Finlands-Svensk band goes where musicians in Iceland
itself still don't show much sign of treading, with a strong
version ot an Icelandic rune poem about the forces of nature
as personified in giants, elves and norns.
If mention of mythological beings evokes dread, fear not;
this is full-blooded, gutsy beauty, not fey Nordic-twilight
mystification.
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