By Ken Hunt - The Folk Collector

YGGDRASIL may look like a tricky name to pronounce but that is no excuse not to remember the word shape. Named after the Norse world tree, the sextet comes from the Faroes. The band, a mixture of winds, strings, percussion and keyboards, is fronted by one of the most sensuous vocalists of our day, Eivor Palsdottir. Under the Odin-esque eye of Yggdrasil’s leader-composer Kristian Blak, the folk-jazz they make is filled with the sounds of Nature and worthy of Valhalla. Live at Rudolstadt (Tutl *****) is a work of consummate musicianship plus everything a truly great recording should be. Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk has captured the sound they made at the Tanz&FolkFest Rudolstadt 2003 beautifully. The single album is permanent testimony to two exceptional concerts, though from memory this is (mainly) from their Landestheater concert. On Umiaq Palsdottir trades vocal parts with Swedish flautist and saxophonist Anders Hagberg exquisitely so that it is impossible at times to tell which is which. The music’s lyricism isn’t lost therefore by not knowing Faroese. Not knowing it allows the listener to switch off and float down-current luxuriating in the sounds. On Crabbed Age And Youth however, Blak turns Palsdottir into Shakespeare’s mouthpiece. If we dished out six stars, it would earn them for its music. Instead, for an album that deserves to make their international name, it gets only five to punish Tutl for its woeful lack of information. If this is not an album of the year, I’ll do penance with a diet of puffinburgers (in season).

From www.columbiagypsy.net

Put all the tracks from this stately and cheerful traditional dance album into a blender and what do you get? Denmark with a little Shetland spice! But there's no electric mixing appliance here, and no Shetland...it's the piano that is reminiscent of Shetland....

Spaelimennir is a multi-national Scandinavian dance band, with members coming from Denmark, Sweden, America (including grammy winning record restorer Charlie Piltzer on bass), and the Faeroe Islands, but it is to the small, isolated Danish Faeroes that they are most closely linked. How do you get to the Faeroes? If you take the Atlantic ferry north from Shetland to Iceland in the summer, you will find them. The band collects music from The Faroe Islands, and you will find a few of these tunes on Malargrot. There are other tunes from Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and some are composed by band members.

The dance music on the instrumental Malargrot is light and cheerful, and very well performed. There are no shamans or omens here, little dark mystisk, but rather community and laughter in warm houses, pubs, and halls. But my favorites do have a little dark lilt in the key structure. One is "Fair Isle Reinlendari," composed in Scandinavian by frettist Ivar Barentsen for the island between Orkney and Shetland...a wee troll seems to be singing in this one, so it sounds a bit Danish and Medieval. The second is a set of tunes from Fano in Denmark, the last of which, "Det forst brujstyk," contains a powerful minor passage emphasized here by piano. Two Fareoese tunes are from the notebook of Jens Christian Svabo (1746-1824). The first, between two Barentson compositions, is straightforward and light; the second, Mars, is an orderly tune that sounds like Bach.!

Faroese Kristian Blak's (mostly) solo piano compositions contrast with the rest of the album tracks. They are actually arrangements of northern traditional music, but, with jazz influences, are much more stark and modern than the originals, and slower and less happy than the dance band tunes. Perhaps it is a contrast with the modern and the historical, with modern autonomy and historical community, or perhaps it can just be heard that way.

Recommended for anyone interested in European/Scandinavian music, dance music, or folk music in general. Malargrot is a lovely album with spirit, and good, honest arrangements and production.

**********

By Kjell Alinge - www.dagensskiva.com

Kristian Blak är Färöarnas evige musikant. Född '47 har han komponerat musik med konstmusikalisk inriktning. Hans verk uppförs av ensembler och symfoniorkestrar internationellt.

Med "FUGLAMÁL" lämnar han instrumenten mänskliga sångröster. Alla ljud på skivan är inspelade av ett team (bestående av Karsten Larsen, Kartni Fornagarö och Jónhedin Tróndheim) tekniker som samlat in ljuden på den mest västliga av Färöarna, Mykines.

Det som gör skivan märklig är den kombinerar en vild och fulllomligt vidöppen och otämjd natur med en koncentration på maximalt uttryck. Ljuden är organiserade och valda med största kärlek och omsorg. Inga instrument är tillagda. Inga tillsatser. Kristian har knådat fram en samling ljudskulpturer som allesammans har en stark doft av hävande hav och visslande, obekymrande vindar. Skivan rymmer 18 spår uppdelade efter dom fyra väderstreckan + en specialavdelning som heter "VINGAR" och då är riktningen rätt upp i himlen, där vingarna bär.

Detta är ett pionjärverk, som sysselsatt Kristian mycket länge. "A Sound Composition by Kristian Blak" står det på konvolutets baksida. Jag känner fjädrar växa ut mellan fingrarna och är totalt benäbbad efter att ha hört genom skivan. OBS - glöm alla tankar eller associationer om gamla fågelskivor - här är det hela fåglarnas värld som är dokumenterad. Res dit du aldrig varit nu direkt - flyg i flocken av starka djur och förundras över hur många klickande, smackande, sörplande, maskingevärsartade läten som finns mitt i svärmen av skum och moln i feta drivor.

Särskilt skönt är att helt glömma funderingar om innebörd och sarkastiska eller fjäskiga tonfall. Naturen och djuren fjäskar aldrig. Blak förstår detta, men han har komponerat av dess dyrbara material och intensifierat känslan av närvaro. Efter att ha hört den här skivan kommer ditt sätt att lyssna på Mozart, Massive Attack och alla Minogues största att ha fördjupats och berikats.

OBS - vissa ljud är SKITROLIGA och direkt SATANISKT SAGOLIKA. Och allt blubb och porl och dunkeldropp från vatten i olika stadier av nedfrysning eller upptining. Sällan har du stött på en hel cd som känns som om du kunde simma genom den på rygg och sen tillbaka igen. Färöarnas fåglar (med hjälp av Kristian och hans vänner) vet något som inga rappare vet. Att den nakna sanningen är störst på den blå planeten. Alla dar. Ju mer jag lyssnar, ju mer ger jag upp varje försök att fånga in fågelljuden här i texten. Text är torrfoder. Havet är himlens drabant och motpol. Som finns med på skivan. Luften och himlen är medmusikanter. Är du?

By Kevin Lau - www.greenmanreview.com

I must confess that before I heard this disc, I had no idea what I was in for. Coming from a purely classical background, I have had a fascination with jazz but little real knowledge to support it. Thus I was immensely curious as to what a crossover of the two mediums would entail, and Kristian Blak, who has written music for both classical and jazz ensembles, seemed like the perfect introduction for me.

And it was, although not in the way I was expecting. I had some preconceived notion of what "classical jazz" meant -- perhaps a kind of tame compromise involving the common elements of tonal and jazz idioms -- but Kristian Blak's work here exceeds those dimensions. His music is a stylistic cornucopia of contrasting sounds and styles, and I was genuinely surprised at how avant-garde his sensibilities were (though, in retrospect, this makes sense, considering the climate of classical music in the latter half of the 20th century). There are many purely jazz cues, of course, and these tend to lie within a more traditional scope of harmony and rhythm. But the overwhelming impression I got was one of an audaciously experimental musician who is not afraid to test new waters in order to further his artistic expression. This CD was thus a refreshing listen for me, although it will no doubt be challenging (even daunting) for many.

The first suite on the CD, entitled "The Four Towers," is based on a folk poem by William Heinesen that details, in a mystical fashion, the characteristics of four towers (west, east, south, north). There are four sections of music corresponding each tower, and each is comprised of three movements. The sections seem to follow a characteristic pattern -- each begins with an extremely free, "naturalistic" soundscape (usually incorporating and manipulating live recorded sounds from nature) and ends with a more traditional jazz movement, but beyond that the styles are all over the map. For instance, the section titled "Vojavoja" (the Tower in the East) begins with a loose texture that is completely non-tonal and arhythmic (i.e. you can't tap to it) and incorporates wolf howls. This segues into "Teeth," in which the instruments honk and bark out seemingly random and indefinite pitches, to incredible chaotic effect. "Vojavoja," by comparison, is almost startlingly consonant.

"Amen-Amen" (The Tower in the South) is particularly notable for the way it is able to unify stylistically diverse elements. The section begins with "Faces," which starts off as an impressive choral fugue suggesting a kind a kind of nostalgia for the Renaissance. "Clouds," meanwhile, features the ultimate lazy, laid-back sax solo. These disparate soundscapes are integrated in a surprisingly effective fashion in the final movement, "Mouths." The entire section, despite its contrasting features, has the same tranquil mood throughout.

The second suite on the CD, "Heygar og Dreygar" (Howes and Trowes), was inspired by Faroese folklore. Again, Blak takes advantage of the large variety of folklore characters at his disposal to fashion a suite of refreshingly diverse elements. "Dvørgamál" (dwarves' language) opens with a stately militaristic drum tattoo and some distinctly french-horn-sounding flute riffs, which are then accompanied by an awkward piano/bass accompaniment, giving the impression of a bumbling creature pretending to be majestic. "Marmennil" refers to a tiny creature that teases fishermen by foiling their sport in various ways: the brilliantly whimsical duet between a nimble, agile flute and a clumsy-sounding sax thus makes perfect sense in context. The final track of the CD, "Flotoyggjar" (floating islands), is a great finale piece. Relaxed, slightly melancholy, and based on an ascending chord progression that repeats throughout, it has the character of a climactic ballad. It is also the most traditional in terms of harmony, rhythm and the obligatory improvisations (which range from impressive to eyebrow-raising -- in a good way).

The performances by Yggdrasil, Blak's jazz ensemble, are excellent throughout. Besides the aforementioned finale track, there are notable solos throughout the album, particularly during "Rok", the North Tower section of "The Four Towers." The improvisations are thoroughly realized, and convey the impression of great freedom and enjoyment, though they may be a tad too frenetic for some listeners.

In the end, this is a CD which really opened my ears. I found Kristian Blak's willingness to stretch the traditions of both jazz and classical music, to expand our preconceived notions of harmony, rhythm, timbre, and style for maximum expressive effect, to be refreshing and interesting. I respect an artist like Kristian Blak for respecting traditions while at the same time recognizing the untapped potential in the world of sound. But then, I am the type of listener who likes to feast on new sounds while enjoying traditional music at the same time. This is thus a CD I would recommend for anyone who is up for an auditory adventure, one that is ultimately pleasant and rewarding even as it charts potentially uncomfortable musical waters.

By Eelco Schilder - www.folkworld.de

When I last spoke with Henk Scholte from the Dutch band Torf (...) he was just about to leave to the Faeroe Islands. 'Eelco" He said, 'How is it possible that such a small country has so many good musicians?' I told him I really dont know but that it is a remarkable fact. Already for more than 25 years the Tutl label issues records and cd's in the jazz and folk vein and still they manage to come with music that matters. One of the most important bands from the Faeroe islands is Spælimenninir which also exist for more than 25 years. From the start they have been playing traditional music from the North and their north includes whole Scandinavia, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and the US. But also they bring original songs in a traditional atmosphere. The seventeen tunes on this new cd's are acoustic traditional folk in new arrangements. The fact that there are also some jazz musicians in the band makes that some songs have a slight different approach than you would normally expect from a traditional Scandinavian band. Besides the piano the band has the fiddle, recorder, mandolin, guitar, harmonium and bass as instruments. Actually Malargrot is exactly what the band has been doing for the last 25 years. Keeping the Nordic tradition alive, lets hope they will do this for many years to come.

****

By Ken Hunt

Eivør Pálsdóttir (v), Tore Brunborg (ts and ss), Anders Hagberg (fl, b fl, seljefløjte), Kristian Blak (piano), Anders Jormin (b), Brandur Jacobsen (dr, perc). Rec. December 2001, Göteborg, Sweden

Shooting the breeze about the Faroes can swiftly degenerate into preferring guillemot or puffin snacks. Yggdrasil was the Norse World-Tree, the ‘Tree of Destiny’, the mythological ash tree whose leaves never fell and were bathed in a cloud of light while its three roots symbolically passed into other realms of consciousness. Poets dubbed it the ‘hydromel-tree’ and hydromel made bards, in Yggdrasil’s case folk-jazz bards. The Faroese keyboardist, composer and record producer Kristian Blak founded the group in 1980 and since then they have left a wake of albums behind them. Musically, Yggdrasil’s sound is unique in the correct sense of unique. Yggdrasil juggles jazz, Faroese vernacular dance tunes, children’s rhymes and Christian hymns, Shakespearean sonnets (in English), birdcall actuality (merlin and golden eagle, now you ask), Greenlander kayak vehicles and mutated Swedish drinking songs. I would hate it if this magnificence sounds like a musical smorgasbord. In their Faroese vocalist Eivør Pálsdóttir, Yggdrasil has a vocalist to compare with Elena Ledda (Sardinia) and (not or) Cleo Laine (England). The perfect antidote to clichémongering about the Faroes. Better, a truly major jazz and ethno-folk discovery begging to be discovered.

Yggdrasil in concert at Tanz&FolkFest Rudolstadt
Rudolstadt, Thüringia, Germany
4-6 July 2003

By Ken Hunt (with a little help from his friends, Jörg and Martina Schwinski and Santosh Sidhu)

... Lastly, the Faroese and pan-Nordic group Yggdrasil improvised a sound that transcended their exceptional eponymous CD. Even for a boy raised on saxophone, there were bewildering times when it was impossible to tell whether the phrase was coming from their vocalist Eivør Pálsdóttir’s larynx or Anders Hagberg’s soprano saxophone. That may not sound like much to you. For me to be so thrown so utterly was a first. Four epiphanies at one festival is a lifetime first for me. Evidently it worked for others too: their recordings, like Ambrozijn and the Hellish Coalminers, sold out.

*********(*)

By Paul van de Viel - www.folkforum.nl

For the sake of good order. This is not the Dutch duo Linde Nijland en Anemarieke Koenders, also known als Ygdrasil (spelled with one g). No, this is a band (or should I say project) from the Faroe Islands.

Maybe more a project than a regular band. The individual members all have their own bands/Cd's (Anders Hagberg, Kristian Blak and Eivør Pálsdóttir are familiar names). Central figure is Kristian Blak who composed and arranged the twelve pieces. Blak originates from Jutland, but for years now he's living on the Faroe Islands. Not only a gifted piano-player, but also a composer of chamber-, choir-, and symphonic music. Always ethnic or ethnic inspired. Truly an artistic wizard!

Singer is Eivør Pálsdóttir. She moved from the Faroes to Iceland and she can turn her hand to anything, so it seems. From Rock (with the band "Clickhaze" she played the 2002 Roskilde festival) to Jazz ("Ivory") and more traditional on her very impressive solo-CD Eivør Pálsdóttir (SHD 50 TUTL). Last month (June 2003) Yggdrasil played the Rochester Jazz Festival. Strange, that this kind of music isn't picked up by folk- or jazz-organisers in The Netherlands or Belgium. Yggdrasil could easily play a folkfestval like Dranouter or a big jazz-festival like North Sea Jazz (The Hague).

On the CD, Eivør Pálsdóttir has this beautiful voice very similar to Lynni Treekrem (on "Haugtussa", one of the best productions from "the north" ever). Sometimes fragile, smooth or improvising (e.g. "The Eagle", "Oxberg" or "Merlin") but always in control. In "Merlin" we hear the cry of a falcon ("Smeleken" in Dutch) in combination with the seljefløte of Anders Hagberg. Beautiful done! More accessible are the two Shakespeare sonnets from the Passionate Pilgrim (arranged and composed by Kristian Blak) and two 17th century (Kingo) hymns "Bort Bort" and "Sorgen var I min Hu".

My personal favourite on the CD is the traditional ballad "Led er din Sang". A mythical story about a Scottish mercenary who was hired by the Swedish King to put an end to Norwegian revolts.

The other members in Yggdrasil: Tore Brumberg (excellent on tenor- and soprano saxophones) and a very strong rythm-section with Anders Jormin (bass) and Brandur Jacobsen (drums, percussion). Surely in my 2003 top 5, this CD.

As with many CD's from the North, not distributed in The Netherlands/Belgium. I bought my copy in Bochum (Germany) at Old Songs/New Songs. Also available on internet: www.tutl.com

By Steve Taylor - www.Rootsworld.com

There is power in united diversity, and the joint product of four talented artists from three countries all spread across the northern latitudes, named Piniartut ("The Hunters"), is outstanding and ageless proof. Tellu Virkkala and Ville Kangas from Finland, join Rasmus Lyberth from Greenland and Kristian Blak from the Faroe Islands, to integrate traditional music from their respective Nordic homelands using hunting and fishing as the focus. On paper the varied styles, motley of traditional timbres but also continental instrumentation seem a risky venture. However, the male/ female, young/old vocals, mora harp, spoken word, bouzouki, violin, piano, organ, double bass, throat singing, percussion, sound effects and electric guitar are a spectrum of complimentary effect throughout ten tracks. In fact, unless the players and orchestra are imagined as one band, from one place, it is difficult to account for the uncanny unity of what happens here.

The songs defy categorization and idiom. They are acoustically descriptive, often subdivided, littered with sturdy tunes and enclosed in an expansive harmonic envelope. What resonates in this atmosphere is an ancient call, a simple human virtue, long declining if not totally forgotten in most industrialized places: that of pure being. But the enormous blessing of a record like Piniartut does not stop there. While traditional music heard on any CD from somewhere else in the world is always a resource-saving alternate to tourism, the Piniartut quartet create an even wiser aesthetic object that offers glimpses of this and something beyond it. As a whole it represents a mythic place one cannot physically visit; as a marriage of three folk sound-worlds, it can only be seen by the imagination. To the clean ear, "The Hunters," a suite of songs and recitations, feels like a movie made of sound; wild, elemental, honest, wondrous, vast and human - the uncorrupted sort. Piniartut is that rare case where a pluralism of essential lore and innovative studio assembly come together to create the best experience a recording can offer and for which no other musical event can substitute; a beautiful living retreat to a place you've never been and hopefully have not yet forgotten.

By Michael Stone - www.Rootsworld.com

Kristian Blak remains a key personality in propagating and promoting Faroese music at home and overseas. Addeq draws inspiration from the calls of birds, animals and the humans who hunt them in East Greenland. The work is an unlikely combination of Blak's piano with the kora, xylophone and percussion of Malang Cissokho, and the contributions of Anda Kuitse (vocals, East Greenland drum), Kelie Kullgren (guitar, vocals) and Peter Janson (bass). Blak is the primary composer, with contributions as well from Malang and Kullgren. This is an experimental poetic work that would appeal to fans of Paul Winter or Paul Horn. The pensive result, with subtle jazz and West African colorings, is an organic invocation of sled dogs, long-tailed ducks, eiders, great northern divers, Lapland buntings, purple sandpipers, white wagtails, whooper swans, polar bears, seals, and the indigenous peoples who have lived in cycle with the animal spirits who populate the Arctic Circle. Just check out the kora-xylophone-bass and frame-drum groove of "Piiseq" to know the gloriously solitary airborne essence of the snow bunting across the great polar wastes. A most unusual and alluring recording.

&

ANYBODY HOME?
John Tchichai
[TUTL HJF 76]

By Steve Taylor - www.Rootsworld.com

Recorded in the same marine cave, Klaemintsgjogv, off the coast of the Faroe Islands, each of these works successfully feature the acoustic space itself as one of the performers. Because the North Atlantic cave is partially water filled, entered only by small boat (in good weather), the presence of water sounds is constant. Danish saxophonist and free jazz/improvising legend John Tchichai plays a more prominent and constant role in his turn inside Klaemintsgjogv, though accompanied by four other instrumentalists (on various percussion, drums, voice, and naverlur. Tchichai makes a roving textured recital without too much honk and squeak that moves toward a climax. Inserted in the middle of "Anybody Home?" is a chamber performance "Forwards & Backwards" featuring Tchichai and the 9-piece Esbjerg Ensemble, which, in view of its modern classical tone, makes for a nice but still related diversion from the free blowing. Gluing the whole album together are excerpts of various local bird cooings, which prove as alien sounding as everything else.

Composer and keyboardist Kristian Blak has written a suite of thirteen parts in which one of five players is featured at one time or another in each, and in combination. Blak's long career has reflected the rich stock of Faroese folk music and hymns, and his Klaemint Suite here shows evidence of these. His gentler, milder version of the cave music is scored for five pieces including electric guitar & bass, trumpet, keyboards and percussion, augmented with some wordless vocals, yet still maintains an improvised ECM-ish feel. But though most moments here evoke serenity be warned there are a few menacing passages too.

The echoic atmosphere of Clement's Grotto is so startling that these performers seem under a spell not to convey music of normal concert form. They make sounds largely in a rhythm free, sometimes halting manner, which allows the cave to speak back into the playing with its own voice of reverberation. Is it ambience? Is it music? It would seem to be both or neither; perhaps it's an interactive phenomenon where sound-etched rock and space emerge as an otherly, little heard or understood entity, that is the controlling architect of what is going on? Klaemint is more akin to listening to cave paintings, for the sounds are frequently spare, awkwardly organic, primitive. While not easily grasped because of their unusual psychology and spirit, these recordings represent rare listening.