From Norwegian folk singer and harpist Sinikka Langeland comes a seductively subtle contemporary jazz album. The lyrics are all Norwegian or Swedish (the sleeve notes have translations), and celebrate the poetry of Edith Södergran and Olav Håkonson Hauge – the first a shortlived pioneer of modern Swedish poetry, the second the Norwegian "lumberjack poet" who came to the art in his 40s. Langeland's band brings together trumpet-player Arve Henriksen and saxophonist/composer Trygve Seim, and it's a magical combination. Despite a predominant feeling of tranquillity, the singer sometimes adds an almost Nina Simone-like bite, for which Seim's smoky sound, Henriksen's ghostly multiphonics and Anders Jormin's bass are ideal foils. The mood is often broken by grooves that suggest some strange fjord-village cabaret music, or episodes that are like Nordic Miles Davis. It's a real one-off.

Being in a room with Sinikka Langeland is like being charmed into a northern forest under a night sky,” wrote Fiona Talkington in Songlines. “Her presence and her voice are magical, but when she plays her kantele you can almost feel nature itself quivering with joy.”

Following it’s surprise digital release, Sigur Rós’ first new studio album in ten years, ÁTTA, is their most intimate and emotionally direct record to date.

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.

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.

SÓLSTAFIR are not like any other band. Their sixth album 'Berdreyminn' underscores this statement. As its title "a dreamer of forthcoming events" aptly describes, the four Icelanders have taken their already impressive evolution one step further. The band has continued to amalgamate haunting melodies, psychedelic phases, as well as strong undercurrents of classic rock and hard rock with echoes of their metal past. Yet SÓLSTAFIR's focus is not on style but pure emotion. 'Berdreyminn' is eclectic by a conscious choice to make feelings audible and transform taste as well as texture to sound. Genre borders are not broken but simply ignored. Musical influences are gathered from a wide range of sources, re-arranged, and woven into new patterns. Melancholy, longing, anger, joy, pleasure, pain, and other emotions are fuelling & fulling this album.

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".

Norwegian folk musician Sinikka Langeland, singer and player of the kantele (the Finnish table harp) is a distinctly non-traditional traditionalist, redefining "folk" in successive projects. 'Maria's Song' finds her in the company of two distinguished classical musicians - organist Kare Nordstoga and "giant of the Nordic viola" Lars Anders Tomter - and on a mission to restore Marian texts to sacred music, weaving folk melodies in between the timeless strains of J S Bach. Langeland made a lot of friends with her sparkling ECM debut Starflowers: "There are jewels everywhere on this arresting example of ego-free music-making. One of the albums of this or any other year" raved the Irish Times. Where Starflowers brought Langeland into the orbit of jazz improvisers, Maria's Song is a meeting and cross referencing of folk and 'classical' energies, and also a righting of historical 'injustice': Religious folk songs are amongst the most distinctive elements of the Norwegian folk tradition, yet the Virgin Mary rarely appears in them.

Til Klovers Takt is an album that stands on the shoulders of everything that came before it in Kampfar's catalogue. It draws inspiration from the first song written 28 years ago as much as it leans on any other period in the band's past. The surroundings of Hemsedal and Hallingdal with their rich history and awe-inspiring nature forms the background for the stories told within the six chapters as well as influencing the tonal and rhythmical approach to the songs. The result is a finely tuned album where each piece has its own voice and its own atmosphere, where nothing is accidental and where the band, having taken control of all aspects of the recording process, were able to create exactly the album they set out to release. Til Klovers Takt is the culmination of four lifetimes worth of experience in songwriting and musicianship, coupled with the hunger to always make the next work the best, it is the image of a band in their prime.

A smorgasbord album, the cast list includes Bjork, Siouxsie Sioux, Brendan Perry, and long-term sidekick Barbera Googan. As expected, the mood is cold, often somber in tone. Only on "The Long Voyage," a springy ditty fronted by Suzanne Vega and John Cale, does the album ascend from the depths. Some of the gloom works, like in "Havet Stomar," a brilliant slow burner with B.J. Cole's pedal steel guitar and ECM artist Lene Willemark's chilling howls. "Annukka Suaren Neito" presents what must be the closest to an Eskimo rap you can get. Mark Isham provides freestyle trumpet that almost sounds like seagulls swooping the skies. The Jane Siberry-fronted "She Is Like the Swallow" is a beauty, as soft as it is light. Hector Zazou's electronics are in fine check too. The canvas expands to new textures, such as metallic percussion in "Adventures in the Scandinavian Skin Trade".

Sigur Rós’s third album, and for many the most quintessentially “Sigur Rós” record, celebrates its 20th anniversary on October 28, 2022. The album has been remastered by legendary mastering engineer Ted Jenson at Sterling Sound, who also mastered every Sigur Rós album from Takk onwards.

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.