Strings & Timpani: Voice & Strings & Timpani
Hubro

“Although it seems inevitable that people hear references in our music, the process of making it has been completely without any specific bands or artists in mind. We have simply opened up our heads and let it all out,” says guitarist Stephan Meidell of the music he and drummer Øyvind Hegg-Lunde create under the Strings & Timpani moniker. Reflecting that very tendency, I occasionally hear similarities between the duo's project and Stereolab as Voice & Strings & Timpani plays, never so much that theirs sounds like a clone of Tim Gane's outfit but more like a modern variant refracted through a Norwegian prism. That Meidell and Hegg-Lunde are joined by vocalists Mari Kvien Brunvoll and Eva Pfitzenmaier on the album suggests the connection all the more.

That being said, Strings & Timpani is very clearly its own model, especially when those four flesh out their contributions with electronics, keyboards, flute, and synthesizer and are joined on the date by Stein Urheim (guitar, electronics, langeleik) and Kim Åge Furuhaug (drums, percussion). Strings & Timpani is, however, very much Meidell and Hegg-Lunde's project as the two are credited as sole composers of the nine tracks. Their names, incidentally, will be familiar to Hubro aficionados: both play in Erlend Apneseth's band, Meidell is one-third of Cakewalk, and Hegg-Lunde plays in, among others, Building Instrument. In speaking about the album, Meidell stresses that a “communal approach to playing” was critical to its creation, such that it's the totality of the musicians together that ultimately characterizes it (one track's even titled “Community”).

As intimated by the album title, the singers are central to the album's sound. Their voices glide across ever-mutating bases fashioned by Meidell and Hegg-Lunde, the singing in moments recalling the kind heard in early Philip Glass as well as in, yes, Stereolab. This is an album that never stays in one place for long and in fact ventures into multiple realms within a single setting. A case in point, “Cashmere” opens in space ambient mode before morphing, first, into a billowing exercise in psychedelia and then a pedal steel-enhanced fusion of motorik and classical minimalism. Wordless vocal accents, drums, and sitars combine for a rambunctious coda, after which vocal chirps brighten the bass-heavy groove driving “Escargot.” Some of the standout tracks are the high-energy ones, with both “Swarming Strings Made Out of Light” and “Talk Tick Talk” wailing to ecstatic effect.

It's impossible to know where each track will go until it arrives, such unpredictability one of the best things about the release. A few meandering passages do arise, as if possible directions are being worked out on the fly (see the lumbering “Laxevaag,” for example), but for the most part Voice & Strings & Timpani keeps the synapses firing. By the way, that weird cover of amorphous shapes bleeding into one another mirrors the stylistic sprawl of the album. There are as many colours in Strings & Timpani's music as there are in that display.

January 2021