Frode Haltli - Border Woods

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Archaic music from who knows where!. Nordic traditions get weird in accordionist/composer Frode Haltli’s stripped-down successor to ‘Avant Folk’.

Accordionist and composer Frode Haltli follows up last year’s acclaimed Hubro release, ‘Avant Folk’, with a smaller-scale yet equally inspired album that is built once again on the combination of traditional Nordic folk forms with influences drawn from world music and contemporary composition/improvisation. In some ways, ‘Border Woods’ is both folkier and more ‘avant’ than its predecessor. The reduction in the size of the ensemble, from a dectet to a quartet, creates a corresponding increase in intensity, while Haltli frequently divides the unit further, using the two matched pairs of performers separately for a number of duo sequences. As the band expands and contracts in response to the demands of each tune, the music veers from cool, meditative explorations at the outer reaches of sound, to full-on pentatonic grooves and folk-rocky, foot-tapping jams.

And what a band it is. Alongside Frode Haltli on accordion, Emilia Amper on nyckelharpa (Sweden’s national instrument, a centuries-old chordophone, or keyed fiddle) makes for a perfect partnership. The two instruments are so alike in timbre that when played in unison it is often difficult to tell which is which or who is who, while the resonance of the nyckelharpa’s sympathetic strings can make it sound uncannily like a Hardanger fiddle. To confuse things further, Haltli’s accordion can so skilfully imitate the characteristics of a fiddle that, when heard in chorus, the instrumental voices recall a mini string-section. Conversely, they can sound like two accordions, too. Both instrumentalists are virtuosi who routinely work across different genres.

Frode Haltli, who has recorded for ECM as well as Hubro, has been playing accordion since early childhood, while Emilia Amper, who comes from Torsas in South east Sweden, is another prodigy, who began the nyckelharpa at age ten. In 2011 she was voted “world champion” of her instrument. ‘In Folk Style’ (2L), the album she recorded with Trondheim Soloists and Gjermund Larsen in 2010, won the Norwegian Spellemannspris and was nominated for two Grammys.

(7033662026135)

SKU 7033662026135
Barcode # 7033662026135
Brand Hubro Music

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