Strings with wings, in cool waters … What to expect when … ???
When you take a variety of string instruments like violin, hardanger fiddle, viola d’amore, contrabass and augment it with saxophone, harmonium, vibraphone/percussion – what you think you will hear, what you think it will sound, what you think you get?
When string-player Nils Økland brings together Mats Eilertsen, Rolf-Erik Nystrøm, Sigbjørn Apeland and Håkon Stene, what do you expect will happen, what do you expect it will sound?
What you get, is a highly confluent, post electronic sound produced purely acoustical based on strong folk music themes. It is less a flickering and pumping broad/big flow but more an undulatory ebb and flow thing.
The acoustic feeling and its dynamics, the purely acoustical stretching creates a sound that is just stupefying when brought by the delicate playing of these five master musicians – a strong crew working for the sake of Økland’s music and musical ideas and he himself a daring musician who succeeded in seducing the musicians to play this daring and unique beautiful music. Extraordinary music, music without parallel!
Extended techniques are fully in service of the pulsating and elegantly undulating sound. With its sophisticated fine tuning this music surmounts many sorts of emanating electronic music. A questions of when doing what with which power and intensity.
This new group of six musicians, Nils Økland Ensemble, will release its first album soon. The musicians all involved deeply here know each other very well from various collaborations.
to be continued
Foto 1 and 2 ©FoBo