Border Woods

The Norwegian accordionist Frode Haltli follows 2018's excellent Avant Folk album with this much smaller quartet formation. There are two percussionists, Håkon Stene and Eirik Raude, with Haltli also being joined by Emilia Amper on nyckelharpa, a traditional many-stringed instrument of her native Sweden. Haltli wrote all of the tunes, but these originals have ancient folk infusions, permeating a landscape of intense introspection. The opener ‘Wind Through Aspen Leaves’ is a scene-setter, with a brooding beginning; there's a soft, all-encompassing hum-drone as cymbals and gongs are brushed or bowed into a glowing surround.

The album's centrepiece follows, with ‘Mostamägg Polska’ making a more overtly folkish traipse. It's led by the nyckelharpa's lilting motion, in a nestled marriage with Haltli's accordion. Unusually, this dance is nearly 16 minutes long, gliding through different movements as patterns shift and steps become increasingly complicated, with heavy-breath sequences breaking out. ‘Taneli's Lament’ is glumly slow, then a silvery percussion glow makes a very melancholy entrance, before a graceful dance motion arrives, and a cool, refined criss-crossing of footwork begins. It's impossible not to consider making idiosyncratic movements while these tunes progress. Suspended tones and slow melodies fill ‘Quietly the Language Dies’, as we view streaked tears through a grey-misted veil, Haltli investing collective sorrow with a strange sense of wistful pleasure.