Eivind Aarset - Strange Hands

Eivind Aarset’s new album "Strange Hands" finds his long-running quartet in restless, luminous form. Joined by violinist Sara Övinge and Mira Thiruchelvam on pullankulal, with Bjarne Stensli capturing and sculpting the sound, Aarset, Audun Erlien, Wetle Holte and Erland Dahlen expand their shared vocabulary into something at once leaner and more unpredictable. The music feels closer to the bone: fewer obvious adornments, more direct impact, yet still bathed in the shifting light and shadow that have made Aarset’s records so uncannily cinematic.

Where earlier albums often pushed the guitar into pure abstraction, this one lets recognisable strings, wood and skin step forward without surrendering the hallucinatory edge. Övinge’s violin and Thiruchelvam’s pullankulal don’t sit on top of Aarset’s world; they are woven into it, bending the harmonic perspective, colouring the air around the drums and bass. Across the record, composed material and open improvisation are treated as equal forces: riffs collapse into texture, textures snap into song, and the band’s shared sense of timing and space does as much storytelling as any solo.