Dirr, by Slagr

Dirr

by Slagr

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

70 NOK or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Comes in a digisleeve with printed booklet. Artwork by Yokoland

Includes unlimited streaming of Dirr via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 2 days

139 NOK or more
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
Includes unlimited streaming of Dirr via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

ships out within 2 days

175 NOK or more

1.	aur 02:46	buy track
2.	strimesong 04:42	buy track
3.	flimmer 06:07	buy track
4.	hel 07:01	buy track
5.	varle 04:45	buy track
6.	eir 03:07	buy track
7.	september 04:14	buy track
8.	yr 02:39	buy track

about

The meditative music of Slagr - whose latest album, ‘DIRR’, was recorded and mixed by Andreas Mjøs of Jaga Jazzist, the producer of two previous Slagr albums - provides a portal for the imagination to roam free: a magical sound-world whose simple melodies and drones combine with an audio-palette of austere yet beautiful instrumental textures to provoke an infinite sense of openness capable of conveying a myriad of meanings.

The instruments themselves - Hardanger fiddle, cello, vibraphone and glass harmonica - imply a measure of the music’s reach, from the folk tradition to renaissance polyphony to the contemporary avant-garde. It’s an aesthetic where the humble, home-spun legacy of Nordic fiddle tunes and church music meets the reticent yet sensuous minimalism of Morton Feldman amid a mysterious liminal soundscape where what is heard sometimes seems like it’s on the very edge of consciousness, as if one is half awake and half in dreams, the music half there and half not.

While it may be reductive to see Slagr’s music as quintessentially northern or Nordic, it does fit the Danish artist Asger Jorn’s conception of the north as “the dream centre of Europe”. This is music that drifts along like clouds, changing shape almost imperceptively as it goes. It also requires very careful attention from the listener, as one adapts one’s ears to a microscopic rate of change where the slow drag of a horsehair bow across bare strings can suggest the harmonic flutter of a Mongolian throat singer’s music of the spheres, and where the disturbance of air around the lip of a glass half-filled with water creates a spectral hum that seems to become part of the very atmosphere, like sonic weather.

But while the music of this very environmentally-aware trio (who in 2016 contributed to ‘Melting’, Amund Sjølie Sveen’s theatrical performance piece on the theme of global warming), inevitably carries strong associations of the natural world - one thinks, say, of a vast forest or tundra landscape whose open spaces represent a logical imaginative response to the wide open spaces of the music itself - there are important cultural associations too, not least with cinema and the filmic.

On the present album's wonderfully pliant opening track, aur, Amund Sjølie Sveen’s glass harmonica drones can suggest the distressed piano-shimmers of Roy Budd’s introductory theme to the cult thriller ‘Get Carter’, or John Barry’s iconic cimbalon-strings on ‘The Ipcress File’, together with their well-attested mutual influence on the creepy Theremin opening to Portishead’s ‘Glory Box’. Indeed, one of the great attractions of Slagr's imaginative open-ness is the potential it holds for hearing allusive echoes of all sorts of things, from sleigh bells to seances. And the idea of a seance - the conjuring up of a particular spirit or atmosphere - might be a relevant reference point. There is an inescapable sense of the uncanny here, a Gothic evocation of rituals in the dark that is very effective whether the music is listened to attentively or used as a kind of subtle ambient ectoplasm floating in the background.

‘DIRR’, while maintaining a satisfying aesthetic unity that allows the album to be perceived as a thematic whole, like a suite or a cycle of related pieces, is also remarkably various. The interweaving of the respective instruments’ at times strikingly similar-sounding timbres, the wide range of noises each instrument makes, and the constant alteration or exchange between the ‘lead’ voice or voices from track to track creates a continual sense of adventure and surprise that is very appealing. We may not know what the music of Slagr is about - if music can be said to be 'about' anything - but it conveys a powerful atmospheric presence, a sort of aural spirit-photograph or record of the spaces - both internal and external - the music seems to move you through as it plays.

credits

released February 18, 2018

Anne Hytta - Hardanger fidle
Amund Sjølie Sveen - vibraphone, glass harmonica
Katrine Schiøtt – cello

all music by anne hytta and slagr

license

about

Slagr Oslo, Norway

Contemporary Nordic Folk Music.
SLAGR is a trio founded in 2003, which consists of Anne Hytta on hardanger fiddle, Amund Sjølie Sveen on vibraphone and cellist Katrine Schiøtt. The combination of these three instruments enables Slagr to create a variety of resonant, sonorous sounds, warm and shimmering, concise and yet poetic. ... more

contact / help

Contact Slagr

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Slagr, you may also like:

Hárr
by Benedicte Maurseth

supported by 12 fans who also own “Dirr”

Earthy and magisterial, haunting yet familiar in the bones. When the CD arrived, I played it 3x in a row. A fantastic folk album. Tip of the hat to The Guardian for writing about Harr. Otis Nugatory
go to album
Nova
by Erlend Apneseth

supported by 9 fans who also own “Dirr”
go to album
Promises
by Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra

supported by 9 fans who also own “Dirr”

hypnotic and incredibly moving marsplutomusic
go to album
Therapy
by Brendan Eder Ensemble

L.A. composer Brendan Eder asks the question: what would Aphex Twin do with a chamber ensemble? Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 9, 2023
go to album
The Land Dictates the Lay of the Stone
by O. G. Jigg

The U.D.O Super 6 polyphonic synthesizer sits at the center of a string ensemble in these disarmingly beautiful compositions. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 25, 2022
go to album
Cape Cod Cottage
by Brendan Eder Ensemble

Brendan Eder Ensemble's latest is minimalist jazz concept record that mixes elements of 60s exotica and avant-garde composition. Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 15, 2021
go to album
Lysning
by Nils Økland Band

supported by 8 fans who also own “Dirr”
go to album