Hubro 10th-Anniversary Concert, The Spice of Life review - boundary pushing Norwegian label marks its birthday

Building Instrument, Bushman’s Revenge and the Erlend Apneseth Trio celebrate their imprint’s first decade

A fiddle projects upwards from between Erlend Apneseth’s knees. Seated, he holds another in his right hand facing-off the instruments against each other. He’s plucking both, the pizzicato pitter-patter suggesting water drops on a bell or a koto. On the other side of the stage, guitarist Stephan Meidell is looping the sound, treating it to form a wash akin to that of a waterfall. In between, percussionist Øyvind Hegg-Lunde is behind a drum kit rattling and scraping what looks like a cheese grater attached to some allen keys.

Reissue CDs Weekly: Dip - Ḣ-Camp Meets Lo-Fi

Collaboration between former Sugarcube and the evolving Jóhann Jóhannsson subverts expectations

The temptation with the 20th anniversary reissue of Ḣ-Camp Meets Lo-Fi (Explosion Picture Score) is to look for traces of what came earlier and pointers towards what would come in Iceland’s music. The album was credited to Dip, a collaboration between former Sugarcubes drummer Sigtryggur Baldursson and the on-the-up Jóhann Jóhannsson.

Mullova, Philharmonia, Järvi, RFH review – clear paths through the forest

★★★★★ MULLOVA, PHILHARMONIA, JÄRVI, RFH Clear paths through the forest

Familiar works refreshed as precision joins passion

Visit Ainola, Sibelius’s woodland house by Lake Tuusula north of Helsinki, and you’ll be told the story of the green stove. It appears that the famously synaesthetic Finnish composer identified the shade of his heating installation with the key of F major.

CD: Vök - In the Dark

★★★ VÖK - IN THE DARK Too-muted second album from downbeat Icelanders

Too-muted second album from downbeat Icelanders

Although In the Dark comprises 11 tracks of outward-facing contemporary North European electronica-infused, dance-edged pop along the lines of “Faded”, the 2015 international hit helmed by Norwegian DJ/producer Alan Walker, an undercurrent implies a fondness for the Eighties.

theartsdesk Q&A: Hedvig Mollestad, Norway's bridge between heavy metal and jazz

THEARTSDESK Q&A: HEDVIG MOLLESTAD Norway's bridge between heavy metal and jazz

The genre-busting guitarist talks about new album 'Smells Funny', a rotting eyeball and more

Norway’s Hedvig Mollestad Trio reset the dial to what jazz fusion sought to do when it emerged, and do so in such a way that it’s initially unclear whether they are a jazz-influenced heavy metal outfit or jazzers plunging feet-first into metal.

Hannigan, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - the sublime and the beautiful

Music of grandeur and delicacy from the Nordic lands

With the London Symphony Orchestra often playing like some commanding and relentless force of nature, Sir Simon Rattle steered two mighty avalanches of Nordic sound into a concert of granitic authority last night. However, I suspect that many people will have left a packed Barbican thinking most of the uncanny winter wonderland that separated these two mountainous symphonies.

CD: Majken - Young Believer

★★★ CD: MAJKEN - YOUNG BELIEVER Unfulfilled promise on Swedish singer-songwriter’s debut

Unfulfilled promise on Swedish singer-songwriter’s debut album

Although both are Swedish, this particular Majken has nothing to do with the pop-reggae-ska band Majken Tajken which has issued a couple of albums.

CD: Kim Myhr - Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds

The Norwegian guitarist collaborates with poet Caroline Bergvall in an enthralling reflection on transformation

If a new soundtrack for L'Année dernière à Marienbad was needed, Pressing Clouds Passing Crowds is it.

CD: Jaakko Eino Kalevi - Out of Touch

Prolific Finnish sonic auteur favours style over impact

Out of Touch hinges on the yearning “Conceptual Mediterranean (Part 1)”, the seventh of its ten tracks. At this point, over two-thirds of the way into the album the yacht rock via early Eighties, late-night blue-eyed soul amalgam has bedded in to such a degree it’s become possible to home in on the song rather than its conceptual foundations. Way back, decades ago, the track could have passed for a Hall & Oates demo but here in the early 21st century it’s a triumph of putting theory into practice.