Silber Rec. 
Origami Arktika : Trollebotn (N,2007)***'
The music of the album is related with Trollebotn, a small area in Telemark in Norway with a wide open landscape and with a lake and mountains, a wild place associated with trolls and mountain giants. It used to be a backwards area with remains of extremely old customs and habits. In a time of further globalisation with fast consumingcultivation and regulation of land and all that is on it, this not only means that so much diversity in nature dies out ; the same happens in the diversity of mankind and all its privately kept and communal secrets, but also all the local variations of more recognisable memories and life stories. I just read that every two weeks another language dies out, and together with it all its customs, myths but also specific wisdoms related with certain areas, and learned in and for specific circumstances. But sometimes just variations of what is generally known dies out as well. Origami Arktika decided to sit down and try to preserve and relive all of what is left in especially Rune Flaten’s memory, because he had some of his musical roots in this area. Some traditional folk songs from Trollebotn and surrounding areas were suggested, and the group worked on them and let them mould very organically into something they felt most comfortable with. To succeed well in this, and with respect for preservation, and also in order to get the right feelings, just in case, not to be distracted from the true sense in them, they went for the recording session to this secluded island and shut themselves of from the rest of the world for a week, playing day and night. Eating, drinking and diving for the sea-serpent (the local legend) while not making music. Only a few extra musical additions were added later near Oslo.
A first thing that is great about the concept is that there is included great background info with each song, and for the Nordic people, lyrics, something which adds depth to the songs. The music is much improvised.
The first track, “Anne Sit Heime”, a lullaby, is softly accompanied by a repetitive pattern by the band, a result which works with a humming to sleep trance effect (even when the band uses drums and electric guitars). But also the next few tracks sound similar as if an old lady sings them to her children, while the band accompanies them with drums, bass, thumbpiano, percussion, rhythmically and with the same kind of humming drone effect. At other times the band plays more organically and technically free, and then it is as if the natural elements of the area reveal itself, with similar sounds like a wooden boat on water, iron or tin clancking to wood and so on, but also with use of water sounds or a soft rhythmically thunder-like bass drumming. The songs and also the stories behind them have very much the desolateness of the area in them, where you cannot escape from circumstances even when new things happen. In that way the band captured this well and express all the sad ballads moodily with a new contemporary sound.
