Erlend Apneseth Trio with Frode Haltli: Salika, Molika
Hubro

If he wished, Norwegian Erlend Apneseth could issue recordings that do little more than feature his Hardanger fiddle playing, and the results would still satisfy. But, like many of his Hubro colleagues, Apneseth is ambitious by nature and regularly seeks out ways to make his music stand out. Exemplifying that tendency is his trio's third album, Salika, Molika, which sees him, baritone acoustic guitarist Stephan Meidell (Cakewalk), and percussionist/drummer Øyvind Hegg-Lunde (Building Instrument) joined by accordionist Frode Haltli on an album wedding traditional folk elements to spoken word and ambient recordings.

The release grew out of a commission from Bergen Kjøtt to present a concert of new music at what was once a meatpacking factory but which has since been converted into artist studios and a performance space. The musicians spent a week at the site before the performance, and Salika, Molika consequently features music from both the show and the rehearsal sessions as well as spoken word and musical samples from the folk music archive in Sogn og Fjordane, west of Norway. The move revisits a methodology applied to previous releases whereby archive recordings are used as a foundation for the production of new material. For Apneseth, such recordings, in this case of regional folk musicians Audun Takle, Karen Hatleberg, and Harald Takle either talking or singing, directly connect what he and his contemporaries are doing to their musical predecessors. The incorporation of said elements isn't handled as mere window dressing either, as Apneseth uses the samples as springboards for improvisation and compositional development.

With electronics the first sound one hears on the album, it's clear Salika, Molika will wend widely and adventurously. A meditative tone set, “Mor Song” thereafter settles into a peaceful melange of plucked strings, percussive rustlings, and warm accordion textures until Audun's laconic voice enters to deepen the folk-pastoral spell. Elsewhere the episodic “Cirkus” creaks and whistles playfully before settling into a sinuous, stop-starting folk pulse and then abruptly segueing into a noise improv until the rhythm re-establishes itself for the duration.

The title track illustrates the way composition builds upon the sampled material, in this case the lilting rhythm of Hatleberg's looped singing serving as a seed from which Middle Eastern-styled rhythms grow, percussion, accordion, and fiddle working together to generate a near-ecstatic folk dance. “Takle” does something similar in using Harald's vocal drum patterns as a template for a swinging number that suggests a Balkan influence more than Norwegian. Meidell, it should be noted, not only plays baritone acoustic on the recording but zither, too, which adds to the Eastern European character of some material.

June 2019