Ritual

Describing their music as shamanic dark folk, Nytt Land are a Siberian duo – Natasha ‘Baba Yaga’ Pakhalenko and Anatoly ‘Shaman’ Pakhalenko – who, between them, deploy drums, flutes, mouth harps and a good deal of throat singing. Ritual is their seventh studio album and the opening title-track sets the scene, with sounds of raven calls followed by urgent drumming and guttural vocals. Natasha's layered harmonies are effective and provide some relief from the monotone of Anatoly's throat singing, which makes ‘Ritual’ sound oddly like a shamanic version of Plastic Bertrand's ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’. ‘The Birth of a Shaman’ is vocally and melodically more adventurous while the dark-yet-danceable ‘Dead Man's Dance’, with its flute and wide-ranging vocals, reminded me of pagan folksters PerKelt.

There are similarities with Norwegian band Warduna, thematically and in terms of instrumentation. Both draw on Norse mythology and make use of the tagelharpa (bowed lyre). But, judging by this album at least, Nytt Land lack Wardruna's sonic variety and authenticity so that, rather than being atmospheric and engaging, Ritual ends up sounding repetitive, overblown and bombastic.