Vasen
Whirled
Northside Records, 530 N. Third Street, Minneapolis MN 55401
Release Date: 1997
If I were to pull you aside and say you gotta hear what Vasen does with a kamelklocka, a kontrabasharpa and a chromatic nyckelharpa, you'd probably think I hung out at that cantina in Star Wars with dudes whose eyes sit atop tall scaly stalks. You'd be wrong. Billions of people have heard the sounds of George Lucas' wacky alien disco, but I doubt many people south of Lapland know a thing about Scandinavian folk music.
I know I didn't, not until Vasen's Whirled showed up in my mailbox. As a confessed country junky, what hooked me first was the abundance of fiddles and other fiddlish noises. Apparently -- and I'm no expert on this subject -- a chromatic nyckelharpa is some sort of fiddle with keys. Whatever it is, it is a central ingredient in this remarkable confluence of interwoven sounds. If you absolutely insist on a comparison to some more "mainstream" artist, try a less-noisy Dirty Three or less-dramatic Rachel's or even Camper Van Beethoven at its wildest moments -- though none of those parallels are entirely convincing. Vasen manages to mix in the exuberance of a square dance (or maybe a klezmer band), and even the dark, folksy spiritualism of a Tchaikovsky symphony or a Russian novel.
What distinguishes Vasen on the world musical stage is the band's emotional nimbleness. These are not "sad" songs or "happy" songs, they are both, and without a single word they tell the complex and contradictory stories that we think and feel but can rarely express. For example, the dizzying heights of "Bambodansarna" strain to push themselves above a halting bass line, but when the joyous melody collapses, that same bass part, solid and pure, is there to break the fall. Then there's the delicate "Nitti Pomfritti," which, like a Brechtmovie, builds with a slow, quiet confidence. But talking about individual songs misses the point; this is an album-lover's album, mood music of the highest order, and while the Scandinavian folk-music scene is a long way away for the average American listener, it's still well within our reach.
-- Chris Schwartz
schwartz@outersound.com
