Aal Buskerud (Norway)

Feb 12 2020

Best of 2019 #12: Erlend Apneseth Trio with Frode Haltli – “Salika, Molika”

Earlier this year, I gave a pretty thorough breakdown of what this album is about and why it’s so damn compelling. The Erlend Apneseth Trio with Frode Haltli created something timeless, music that has deep roots and eyes to the stars and beyond. But now having spent nearly a year with this recording, and had the time to experience it at first listen, grow increasingly enamored with it, analyze it objectively for a write-up, and then get to where it settled in as one of my go-to albums when I just wanted some music to fill up the space in my house and my life, it’s gotten to where Salika, Molika elicits more abstruse reactions and oblique connections.

That past-future timelessness, and how it’s couched within a foundation of folk musics, it reminds me of other brilliant and adored recordings, like Down Deep from the trio of Ernst Reijseger, Harmen Fraanje, and Mola Sylla, and, similarly, Codona 3 by another trio, of Don Cherry, Collin Walcott, and Naná Vasconcelos. All of these recordings had a way with their melodies, where they could come head on or an indirect route and nail their target, and they each conducted an inspired rhythmic discourse, the kind where its just as likely to compel the foot to tap as trigger the brain to try to interpret what it all means. They each utilized unconventional instrumentation, and yet made it sound like something common to everyday life, as if crickets bathed in moonlight or the electric hum of the city at daybreak. These are old soul recordings. They transcend the bookends of our own personal timelines and make us feel as a part of something more eternal, entering a special place where art becomes immortality, and everyone it touches.

The musicians tapped into that source for this session, and it’s magical.

Your album personnel: Erlend Apneseth (hardanger fiddle), Stephan Meidell (baritone acoustic guitar, zither, live sampling and electronics), Øyvind Hegg-Lunde (drums, percussion) and Frode Haltli (accordion).

<span style="display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;" data-mce-type="bookmark" class="mce_SELRES_start"></span><a href="http://erlendapnesethtrio.bandcamp.com/album/salika-molika">Salika, Molika by Erlend Apneseth Trio</a>

Released on Hubro Music.

Music from Aal, Buskerud, Norway.

Listen | Read more | Available at: Bandcamp – Amazon

By davesumner • Recap: Best of 2019 • 0 • Tags: Aal Buskerud (Norway), Best Jazz of 2019, Erlend Apneseth, Frode Haltli, Hubro Music

May 28 2019

Album of the Day: Erlend Apneseth Trio with Frode Haltli – “Salika, Molika”

Folk music should feel like it’s got roots. It should exude a presence that radiates history, as if the notes that comprise it have been absorbed into the bones of musicians from long ago and, over time, into those of listeners who have nurtured its lineage by humming its melody under the breath over the centuries. A folk music tune should be caked with the dust of time.

But there’s no requirement on the source of the soil or, even, the time it traverses.

The new album from the Erlend Apneseth Trio is a case in point. The sampled voices and spoken word echo the stories and narratives of the past, but the live sampling and electronics and improvisation provide an elusive time stamp, as if this is folk music whose roots won’t manifest until sometime far off in the future… and in a land not yet discovered.

Apneseth has a proven track record of utilizing his hardanger fiddle as a doorway to recapture the life of old tunes, but never before has he quite so freely moved along the timeline. Some of this alluring clash between past and future is the resulting convergence of guest Frode Haltli’s accordion and the electronic textures from baritone guitarist Stephan Meidell. There’s an awestruck beauty to the way these disparate elements fall into one another’s embrace. It’s a union further cemented by the percussion of Øyvind Hegg-Lunde, and a rhythmic voice that could express the same resonance and equanimity in any era and never seem out of place. This, too, can be said about the spoken word sampling interspersed throughout, and how these voices are rooted to their time and place, but the specifics need not ever be itemized or accounted for, because the roots of folk music run deep, and as such, are connected to everything. And that means the music, this music, Erlend Apneseth Trio’s Salika, Molika, is timeless.