Whirled CD cover
Whirled CD cover
Whirled CD cover
Whirled CD cover
VÄSEN

Whirled

Northside Records

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I was suspicious and worried when I first heard that this phenomenal trio of keyed fiddle, viola and guitar from Sweden had expanded to a quartet with the addition of a drummer. A drummer? With Roger Tallroth's percussive guitar as the bottom for the band, with Mikael Marin's complex underpinnings of viola, with Olav Johansson's incredible nyckelharpa playing, what would they need with a drummer? I had visions of them developing yet another "folk-rock" hybrid that sounded mostly like everything else I had already heard. A drummer? And one named André Ferrari?

Well, the tight, complicated arrangements and percussive drive are still there on Whirled, and the addition of Ferrari is in fact yet another stroke of good fortune for this interesting band from Sweden. This album offers some of their best compositions yet, and they clearly have composed at least some of them with the new musician in mind, offering little hints of more eastern music to filter into their already successful mix of jazz, traditional folk and medieval tones. In fact, it's Ferrari as composer on "Shapons Vindaloo," a very Mustapha-esque Arabic journey, that pulls all of the mentioned elements together very effectively in a very contemporary sounding acoustic tour de force. They do traditional styles beautifully, as in Tallroth's "Thirty Year Jig" which expands nicely with the addition of a frame drum, or Marin's humorous instrumental "Nitti Pomfritti" (90 French Fries), where the clunking wood percussive describes the drunken footsteps of a post-debauch late night stroll.

The key to the sound of this band is still in the nykleharpa, a keyed drone fiddle that Johansson is an acknowledged master of. It is this instrument that adds the mystery to the music, and his dark, rolling "Tärtulingen" exemplifies what Väsen is all about, a merging of times and styles that is singularly Swedish and uniquely their own. - Cliff Furnald

More Scandinavian Music includes a Vasen concert review and inteview with audio.

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