Description
Wonderful debut album on Jazzland from Norwegian duo Stein & Mari, who inhabit a musical plane of their own, rooted in the blues of the 1920s and 30s with branches into jazz, electronic impro-noise, atonal rock and metamorphosed Norwegian traditional music; everything fused into an effortless mélange.
Tracks like "Lilletrollet" and "Explorer's Club Annual Dinner" have elements of tribal music, moving steadily through imaginary jungles of sonic wash and swirl, shot through with glitches and moments of electronic disruption. Hints of pop music come and go, and in tracks like "Sleeping in the Bush" and "Paradoxes", these creep through landscapes of Ambient Americana, trading stumbling guitar lines with the ghosts of Delta bluesmen and modern successors like Ry Cooder. While "We're so Many" carries echoes of early Jane's Addiction in childlike sing-song melodies, "Voss" displays an ambient country sound, echoing Ry Cooder once again, and with perhaps a tip of the hat to Norwegian guitar great, Knut Reiersruud.
Stein Urheim received the Vossajazzprisen in 2010 for his work on the Norwegian jazz and contemporary music scene, an award Mari Kvien Brunvoll received the following year for her solo project with voice and electronics that has been performed extensively throughout Europe for the past few years.
Personnel: Stein Urheim (vocals, guitars, fretless bouzouki, tamboura, harmonica, flutes, loop & delay), Mari Kvien Brunvoll (vocals, effects, loops, kalimba, percussion handclaps), Hans Olav Molde (percussion on 'We're So Many')
