After three fine quartet albums that culminated in 2014's excellent Extended Circle, Norwegian pianist and composer Tord Gustavsen returns to the trio format of his earliest ECM outing. What Was Said isn't a look back at the standard piano trio format. German-Afghan vocalist Simin Tander joins the pianist and drummer Jarle Vespestad. Gustavsen's instantly recognizable sound ripples in ever widening circles around melodies often based in traditional Norwegian hymns, folk songs, and gospel music. This band incorporates improvisational elements into the core of each composition, and the singer is a co-conspirator in the moment of creation. Tander sings in Pashto, Norwegian, and English. In most cases, lyrics have been translated from their origins into another tongue. Tander's delivery, an expressive and disciplined, slightly smoky contralto, is full of mystery…

Norway’s most far-out and unique prog band TUSMØRKE is back! This album is not for the faint of heart. Like some great Babylonian harlot, the sinfully sweet sounds held within this record will deny no one, but they extract a great price! There will be no turning back should you proceed on this wretched path and cut your way through the thickets so green, for the path is fraught with danger and temptation. Proceed and you might find yourself sucked off, as it were, to a strange fairyland where every bush and clearing is gushingly alive with the brazen bacchanals of satyrs and nymphs. Continue and you will find yourself in a world where chance encounters of mildew-encrusted adult magazines, carefully stashed away in the shrubs are nothing short of erotic mysteries reminiscent of ancient fertility cults.

Arcturus took a decade off of creating studio albums after Sideshow Symphonies and have returned with this, a pretty solid release which, though it lacks any fully-fledged epics (with all the song lengths at less than six minutes), still offers a confection of progressive-minded metal with symphonic and black metal touches, with the inclusion of an actual string section really allowing them to bring their symphonic aspect to the fore. Sebastian Grouchot guests on violin and adds a nicely melancholic touch to pieces such as "Crashland".
Like the preceding Sideshow Symphonies, this does not feel like as striking and groundbreaking a release as any of their first three studio albums (up to and including the classic Sham Mirrors)…

Ketil Bjørnstad previously explored the life of Edvard Munch in his acclaimed 1993 novel Historien om Edvard Munch. When invited to compose music for choir in 2011 his thoughts turned once again to Munch and to the writings, still not widely known, of the proto-Expressionist Norwegian painter. With these as his guide, Bjørnstad shaped Soloppgang (“Sunrise”) subtitled “A cantata on texts by Edvard Munch”. In his liner notes, Bjørnstad observes that “the texts written by Munch can be compared to his paintings in their power and intensity.
He wanted to be a writer as well as a painter… texts from different periods in Munch’s life have been used in Sunrise. They all portray existentialist dilemmas: surviving or being destroyed, believing or observing”…

Molde author Endre Ruset has had great success with his poetry book, Noriaki, which was published by Flamme Forlag in 2017. It has been called jump poetry, as the poems throughout use the name Noriaki, after the legendary Japanese ski jumper Noriaki Kasai. Since 2014, Noriaki has also been a tea ceremony and an evolving art project with musician Stian Omenås. In 2022, Endre and Stian decided to make a recording of the Noriaki book.

A graceful mixture of classical majesty and black-metal brooding and aggression, Aspera Hiems Symfonia is a powerhouse album chock full of charged riffs, sinister chants and howls, and some wonderfully foreboding atmospheres. "Wintry Grey" is a metal tune worthy of the Clockwork Orange soundtrack.

Never has a more apt title for a release been used. Arcturus have looked at the rule book, and although they haven't actually ripped it up and started again, they have taken its core, twisted, manipulated and totally transformed the damn thing. Okay, other bands have tried this, most of whom have fallen flat on their arses in the process, which is where Arcturus differ dramatically. This is sensational stuff. Dipping in and out of elegant dreamy sound scapes that fit perfectly into the mix. Nothing sounds out of place, although in turn nothing sounds like anything before it. Comparisons shouldn't really be identified in any review because to be honest there isn't really anything relevant in the current scene. This is original, majestic and a true piece of modern day art…

A journey through the boundless layers of existence, for the new studio album of indrawn, brooding black metal from the Norwegian pioneers.
Black Medium Current is the sixth studio album by longstanding Norwegian avant-garde pioneers Dødheimsgard. From their influential and successful beginnings as a raw and grim black metal outfit established during the ongoing swelling of the "second wave" in the early-mid 90s, Dødheimsgard has subsequently evolved into a truly eclectic behemoth with each landmark release; a band now undoubtedly adorned with the mastery of mood and texture through intricate, dark metallic wonderment and unnerving eloquence…

Debut solo album from Wobbler’s Lars Fredrik Frøislie! Fitting perfectly into the 70s prog-rock tradition where the keyboardist makes a solo album between the band albums, this is music Frøislie has been doing, mostly alone, during the pandemic. Had it not been for the pandemic, much of the material would probably have ended up on a new Wobbler album - but then run through the Wobbler grinder and with English lyrics. In other words, this is unpeeled and raw, as spontaneous as possible without going through too many rounds of processing. Trying to preserve the impulsive - much of what you hear is improvised, and one-takes (preferably with playing errors and piano strings that break and the like). Trying to preserve the human aspect to a large extent, avoiding click tracks, auto-tune, MIDI or too much technology. Expect lots of old analogue keyboards such as cembalo, Mellotron, MiniMoog, Yamaha CP70 and Hammond organ.

Whatever one thinks and believes about salvation, sin and grace, one must have a heart of stone not to believe in Kim Rysstad when he interprets old spiritual songs such as "Jesus din søde forening at smake", "Villfarande barn" and " Langt Inn På Ville Heii".

In true Enslaved fashion, the Bergen voyagers' 16th album, "Heimdal", is both a departure and a communion with roots forged over three decades ago in the turbulent birth throes of Norway's black metal scene. "Heimdal" is named after arguably the most mysterious entity in Nordic mythology and the album itself a reflection of paths travelled, a promise of a new beginning, and a rite of passage between the two.

After aging the past 24 years, Nils Henrik Asheim’s work “Salmenes bok” (“The Book of Psalms”) has now been released. The hour-long work was written for the dedication of Oslo Cathedral’s new Ryde & Berg organ in 1998. It features both organs in the cathedral (with Kåre Nordstoga on the choir organ and Asheim playing the main organ) to create a surround sound around the choir singing 21 texts from the biblical Psalms in a rich tonal language equally rich in contrast. The result is a unique listening experience, a magical fusing of voices and organ.

All the music on this CD has the countertenor as a common denominator. There is something beautifully unsettling about hearing a male singing in the register of a female singer. It throws us back to a, fortunately, bygone time when the same vocal properties were reached by the barbaric practice that produced the male “castrati”. Nowadays, male singers who wish to sing in this register develop their falsetto and head voice techniques in a natural way.