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Let's dive into the debut album from a daring new folk/jazz quartet from Sweden.

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A new kind of album review on the Nordic Sound Channel. And what better way to return to the grind than with a new release from one of my favorite Nordic singers, Eivør.

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"Eivør calls her Nordic home in the remote Faroe Islands a landscape of extremes. Sitting in the North Atlantic Ocean just above Scotland and southeast of Iceland, with a total population of about 50,000, the climate is “full of contrasts—very dark, heavy winters and bright summers.” Growing up in a small village there, of about 400 people, it’s those contrasts that have inspired Eivør’s music throughout her career.

Often considered to be one of the most prolific and unique Nordic artists of her generation, Eivør has released 11 studio albums to date, crossing musical genres and always pushing the envelope of the expected. Awarded with the Nordic Council Music Price in 2021, Eivør’s musical journey continues to fascinate and has seen her perform across the globe; from Europe’s biggest festival stages to providing the soundtrack to Netflix’s hit series The Last Kingdom and the video game God of War: Ragnarök.

Her forthcoming new album ENN ties back to Eivør’s Nordic roots. Most of the lyrics, sung entirely in Faroese, were penned in collaboration with the Faroese poet Marjun Syderbø Kjelnæs. Eivør calls the lyrics to the title track especially “hardcore.” The song is about war—“the wars that are going on in the world especially lately, but that have always been going on,” Eivør says, “and how to find a glimpse of light in this overwhelming darkness.” The guttural penultimate track, “Upp Úr Øskuni,” is a thrilling outlier mixing growling beatboxing with visceral throat singing (it’s certainly Eivør’s most metal moment).

ENN stands out among Eivør’s discography as a bold new venture. Her debut for Season of Mist, the album leans heavier into dark electronics. Her new Prophet-5 synthesizer hardly made it out of the box before she keyed up “Hugsi Bert Um Teg”, a swooning bit of dream-pop that dances like the colors of the milky way.

On a grand scale, ENN follows a cosmic arc. The title track is a symphonic, war-torn space odyssey. But the album also dwells on more earthly concerns. Lead single “Jardartra” is told from the perspective of a wounded mother earth, who calls to us with a steadily thumping bassline that’s as dark and warm as our planet’s molten core. “Come lie down in my blue embrace”, Eivør sings, reaching into her operatic register, as if beckoning us toward the light.

On ENN, Eivør moves heaven and earth."

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Join me in welcoming Jonathan Barendsma of Gealdyr, a rising star in the dark folk scene. In this conversation, Jonathan and I discuss the importance of music and art as escape and vicarious living for those in difficult situations, a mutual love of soundtracks, and dancing the line between Nordic and Celtic soundworlds.

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In this very special episode I'm joined by fellow musicologist and mentor Ross Hagen to talk heathen musicology and how he and Mathias Nordvig went about approaching "Ancestral North: Spirituality and Cultural Imagination in Nordic Ritual Folk Music" - a musicological book on the nordic pagan music scene. Thanks for the good hang Ross!

"Ancestral North: Spirituality and Cultural Imagination in Nordic Ritual Folk Music offers a detailed exploration of Nordic ritual folk music, a music scene focused on the revival of ancient folkways and archaic music that has found remarkable popularity around the globe. Once the domain of Viking reenactors and neopagan practitioners, the niche sonic and visual aesthetics of this music have found widespread visibility through a new generation of popular films, television series, and video games. The authors argue that many of these musical and media products connect with longstanding cultural attitudes about the Nordic region that conceive of it as wild, exotic, and dangerous, while also being a place of honor, community, and virtue. As such, the Nordic region and its music often becomes a vessel for reactionary escapes from all manner of modern discontentment. However, the authors also posit that spending time re-creating the music of an imaginary past offers participants the possibility for engagement and re-enchantment in the multicultural present."

Link to the Book

And more importantly, the 30% off code! - LXFANDF30

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https://seidrblot.bandcamp.com

In this interview, I'm happy to be joined by Visy Bloodaxe of Seidrblot to talk about a range of topics including the music he makes with the band, working with wood, how a love of medieval music led to him learning how to build his own instruments, and finding escape through music in a world filled with noise.

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Do musicians get the final say in what their music is called, and is genre meant to be a literal descriptor of the music we hear?

In the 3 years I’ve been running this channel, covering the music of Wardruna, Heilung, and almost everything in that sphere, I have had endless conversation over what to call this music with many alternatives offered for the sake of “anything but Viking music”. Dark folk, pagan folk, nordic folk (the worst option for reasons obvious to traditional musicians), heathen folk, new nordic folk… and even the major artists themselves have been outwardly disassociating from the level. But why don’t any of the alternatives stick instead of Viking music?

Join me in this conversation about the contentious yet seductive nature of the Viking music phenomenon from the perspective of an ethnomusicologist. Questions here are posed around the nature of genre, the binding themes of this music scene, artist and audience perspectives, and whether or not any of this is about historical accuracy at all, and if that matters to the ultimate enduring label of Viking music.

Or, can we not change how we talk about Viking music at all before we change how we talk about the Viking age itself?

My ultimate hope is that questions brought up in this video start some needed conversations to be carried on as this genre continues to grow, instead of continuing the trend of dancing around the subject as we run on the euphemism treadmill. Because remember, I don’t have the answers, only the questions. The answers are what we as a community make them to be.

Thank you for watching.
-Jamo

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Long have I been enchanted by the music of Ævestaden. The way these captivating musicians utilize instruments typically associated with dark folk (such as the lyre and bukkehorn), but instead put it in a folktronica setting where it somehow just fits so organically is a feat within itself. Solen var bättre där was on my top 10 albums of 2023 not only because of this incredibly original use of familiar instruments, but also because the songwriting is on another level of melancholy - reaching out to the feeling of nostalgia and yearning for a better time in a way that only music could. So, join me in welcoming Kenneth, Eir, and Levina onto the Nordic Sound Channel for the first (and hopefully not the last) time as they bring us into their musical world.

Thumbnail photo: Klara Bond

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aevestaden.bandcamp.com

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