Album: Electric Eye - Horizons

★★★ ELECTRIC EYE - HORIZONS Norwegian psych-rock with jazz and Krautrock leanings

Norwegian psych-rock with jazz and Krautrock leanings is a trip

Bergen’s Electric Eye’s pithy description of themselves is “psych-space-drone-rock from Norway.” They also say they “play droned out psych-rock inspired by the blues, India and the ever-more expanding universe.” Horizons is their fourth studio album.

Album: The Eivind Aarset 4-Tet - Phantasmagoria, or A Different Kind of Journey

★★★ THE EIVIND AARSET 4-TET - PHANTASMAGORIA, OR A DIFFERENT KIND OF JOURNEY Norwegian jazzers take on space rock

Norwegian jazzers take on space rock

Phantasmagoria, or A Different Kind of Journey instantly sets its controls for an excursion into the interstellar void between gaseous and solid objects. Opening cut “Intoxication” begins with lightly pulsing bass and a keyboard texture. Shimmering guitar floats over the top. Though more sparse and lacking vocals, it’s as if Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them” were performed by an earlier model of the band which had focussed on reducing performative grandeur as much as possible.

The North Water, BBC Two review - a terrible voyage into the great beyond

★★★★ THE NORTH WATER, BBC TWO A terrible voyage into the great beyond

Director Andrew Haigh brings cinematic heft to this bloody whaling odyssey

It’s perhaps unfortunate that The North Water arrives on BBC Two only a few months after The Terror, since it’s impossible to avoid the parallels between them. They’re set only a few years apart (1859 for The North Water, 1845 for The Terror), both involve doomed voyages into Arctic waters, and each of them gets darker and bloodier as it depicts man’s inhumanity to man (and not just man) and the encroaching horror of a heart of darkness.

theartsdesk Q&A: conductor Klaus Mäkelä

Q&A: CONDUCTOR KLAUS MÄKELÄ Balancing freedom and control in Oslo and Paris

Balancing freedom and control in Oslo and Paris

Let the facts – and the music-making you can see and hear online – speak for themselves first.

Album: Elephant9 - Arrival Of The New Elders

★★★ ELEPHANT9 - ARRIVAL OF THE NEW ELDERS Norway’s jazz-prog luminaries

Norway’s jazz-prog luminaries take their feet off the accelerator pedal

Arrival Of The New Elders is unlike anything Norwegian trio Elephant9 have done before. Previously, their jazz-prog mélange was as full-on as it could be. Attacking, hard and heavy. Now, a previously unfamiliar pensiveness has been revealed.

Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch, Royal Academy review - juxtapositions that confuse rather than clarify

★★★ TRACEY EMIN / EDVARD MUNCH, ROYAL ACADEMY Similar themes, different sensibilities

Similar themes, different sensibilities

Even before going to art school, Tracey Emin discovered the work of the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch. And even though he was born 100 years before her, she embraced him as a kindred spirit. One can see why. Whether painting figures, buildings or landscapes, Munch projects onto his subjects the intense feelings of desolation, loneliness and abandonment which haunted him most of his life.

Oslo Philharmonic, Mäkelä online review - focus, flair and midwinter heartbreak

★★★★ OSLO PHILHARMONIC, MAKELA ONLINE Focus, flair and midwinter heartbreak

Hyperactive filming nearly ruins musical magnificence culminating in ideal Sibelius

Artists’ management Harrison Parrott has started a concert streaming platform called Virtual Circle on emusiclive.com, launched two days ago and only available as a live event - no catch-ups. Watching its debut concert - the Oslo Philharmonic with the much-buzzed-about Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä - it struck me that it must be terribly difficult to film an orchestra effectively.

Album: Annie - Dark Hearts

★★★★ ANNIE - DARK HEARTS Cult Norwegian pop star makes welcome synth-pop return

Cult Norwegian pop star makes a long overdue and welcome synth-pop return

The term electro-pop has kind of lost its meaning, The Top 20 has, for many years, been full of music created on computers, from Charli XCX to BTS to Clean Bandit. Yet still, as a genre header, it's often used to refer to music that riffs on the sound of the 1980s synthesizer pioneers.

Classical CDs Weekly: Ole Bull, Vítězslav Novák, Schumann

CLASSICAL CDS WEEKLY Virtuoso violin music from Norway, early Czech modernism and a pair of German romantic symphonies

Virtuoso violin music from Norway, early Czech modernism and a pair of German romantic symphonies

 

Ole Bull Stages of LifeOle Bull: Stages of Life Annar Follesø (violin), Norwegian Radio Orchestra/Eun Sun Kim, with Wolfgang Plagge (piano) (2L)

Reissue CDs Weekly: This Is Our Music - Jazz Out Of Norway

Double-disc testament to a nation’s fertile musical seedbed

The Turnamat is a type of washing machine made by AEG. In the composition titled “Turnamat”, Seventies-type synths, wobbly keyboard lines and hard-grooving drums give way to a brass-led interlude suggesting an acquaintance with the compositions of Lalo Schifrin. It’s as if a jazz-inflected soundtrack from 45 years ago has been shoved into a blender rather than a washing machine, then reconstituted and given a major buff-up.