The Moon We Watch is the Same

Not long after meeting as music students at 2013's Nordtrad conference, these four young folk musicians from Denmark, Finland and Sweden were ‘jamming, chatting and enjoying the sun’ one afternoon by the banks of the river Vilnia when a huge dead hog floated by. Having initially presumed that this ghastly apparition was a piece of furniture, they decided to name themselves after the floating sofa they hadn't actually seen, rather than the deceased pig they had. Strange, you might say, but that does actually feel relevant to music which, while rooted in the traditional music of their native lands, finds Mads Kjøller-Henningsen (wooden flute and Swedish bagpipes) and Clara Tesch (fiddle) from Denmark, Leija Lautamaja from Finland (melodeon and harmonium) and Malte Zeberg (double-bass) from Sweden fearless about veering away from the expected, often lending a subtly askew air to proceedings. The witchy voice of a long-dead Jutland clog maker and storyteller surfaces disconcertingly during their version of ‘The Maiden and the Moon’, which leads into the contrastingly rather lovely instrumental of the title-track. A booklet photo shows the four musicians climbing towards the stars: this may not be merely fanciful, as they are a demonstrably talented, visionary bunch.