Label Collective Rec. 
Niss Stricker : Under Himmelhavet (DK,2009)****
Nick Stricker sounds like a really fine discovery ! This psychfolk inspired songwriter used a multitrack recording with acoustic guitar, sitar, violin and tabla and some glockenspiel, piano & Rhodes. He’s especially gifted in expressing an eastern flavour in his voice, (where the Danish language seems to adapt to very well too), and where violin/tabla/sitar improvise further on the mood this creates. But we also have some minstrel-flavoured songs, slightly happier or more up tempo folk inspirations (not bringing us too far from the original, psychedelic folk vibe), or an occasional song-based track with an attractive emotion in the voice, and still with the inevitable flavours of organ and tabla and such. This was Niss' second solo album (after “Fuglphoenixfjer” from 2003).
Niss Stricker is involved in other rewarding projects like Lotus Krokus and Himmelvand, which I hope to hear better in future too.
Song titles of "under himmelhavet"("beneath the sea of the sky") :
1 = song to Madho-lal, 2 = the dance of the moskitoes, 3 = something like "there was a glade hidden in this forest", 4 = Salomë, 5 = you love, I love , 6 = only rain, 7 = decadence in C, 8 = as you are walking, 9 = To Camelot, 10 = Spring on Facebook, 11 = Dronning Dagmar*
* "It's a traditional Danish folk balad from the middle ages. The title means Queen Dagmar. She lived in the 13th century and was originally a princess from Bohemia who married the king "Valdemar". As a wedding gift she asked only that he would lower the tax that the farmers had to pay and that all prisoners be released from prison. She won the hearts of everybody right away, but she was very young when she died giving birth to the prince) Niss thought it was a nice story and that it was the kind of modal music that was played in the middle ages to be suitable for sitar, because it shares a lot of the same ideas."
“The whole record was meant as a sort of collection of stories, to begin with at least, and even though there might be a lot of Scandinavian roots in the music the idea was that we live in a global-village and even though we have a hard time getting along sometimes, then there are many things that we share, such as our stories and songs, that are all our common human heritage - that's why there are songs like the first number that is very inspired by Hindustani music and is based on a Pakistani legend and some that are more western like Til Camelot for instance...”
