This week the tap dancer Janne Eraker, fiddle player Vegar Vårdal, and bassist Roger Arntzen land with the click of a heel on the Lisbon-based jazz label Clean Feed Records, as from the depths of the pandemic the unique trio emerge to unveil their debut album Gol Variations. In fact the birth of the record stretches all the way back to the twelfth century and the stave church of Gol from the Norwegian valley region of Hallingdal. With its soaring portals and carved motifs, when the stave church was up for demolition around 1880 it was saved by Fortidsminneforeningen or the National Trust of Norway, one of the first organisations for cultural heritage preservation in the world. Relocated and rebuilt where it still stands today at the heart of the Norsk Folkemuseum on Bygdøy in Oslo, the trio spent a full day recording inside of the church, whose old floorboards emphasise the snapping and cascading physicality of Eraker’s dancing buttressed by the sinewy bass, smacking vocals, and staggered strings of Arntzen and Vårdal.
For their second album on Black Truffle, the duo of Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris as String Noise present a complete anthology of solo and duo violin pieces by the American experimentalist Christian Wolff, from his early explorations of indeterminacy as a student of John Cage and the youngest composer associated with the New York School, through political themes and more lyrical pieces as he worked alongside Frederic Rzewski and enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with the choreographer Merce Cunningham. ‘Bread and Roses’ belongs to Wolff’s seventies period, an arrangement of an early twentieth-century song inspired by a speech by Helen Todd and poem by James Oppenheim which became an anthem for generations of female labour activists.
Fresh from the pedospheric vibes and aqueous polyrhythms of Wet on Wet, which found the sound artist conversing with frogs and manipulating field recordings on the banks of the Toce river, Felicity Mangan takes a window seat, a sleeper berth, or a pew in the waiting room as she reworks a series of recordings made during a tour of Scandinavia in a bid to encapsulate the slow pace and interminable delays of train travel. Haru Nemuri features on the third extended play by the Japanese melodic hardcore band Fall of Tears, and Jenny Hval shares a new song which strives for a semblance of hope, galvanised by multiple viewings of the classic nineties television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
As the Kampala-based Nyege Nyege Tapes continues to expand its retinue, on Shadow Swamps the Metal Preyers crew take a detour through dankest backwaters, self-described as the soundtrack to a pitch-black fairy tale about a father and daughter who take perilous steps to avoid gremlins, red swines, and crater creatures. Christina Carter and Mari Maurice dabble in intuition and alchemy in their first meeting as Nighte for Mappa Editions, inspired by Charlie Haden the sonorous guitar of Julian Lage finds its groove on the closer to View With A Room, and Kelela tries to stymie the run as she gives flight to her upcoming dance album Raven, as tracks by Charles Lloyd, Karen Vogt, Eden Samara, and Eluvium complete the roundup of best new music.
Playlists: Spotify · Apple Music · YouTube
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Karen Vogt – ‘I’ve been waiting for the longest time’
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Christian Wolff & String Noise – ‘Bread And Roses’
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Fall of Tears – ‘Jasmine’ (feat. Haru Nemuri)
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Felicity Mangan – ‘Locomotion’
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Jenny Hval – ‘Buffy’
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Metal Preyers – ‘Escape the Sunrise’
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