root salad Afenginn
Pan-Nordic band play folk rock punk classical jazz world tango. Got that? Chris Nickson takes notes…
T
he fashionable thing these days is to say a band’s unclassifiable. The thing is, in Afenginn’s case, it’s true. Danish? Well, sort of. Folk? Maybe
a little. Traditional? Definitely not! Balkan influences? Yes, a bit. They’re everything and a bit more, playing music composed by bandleader and mandolinist Kym Nyberg, a Finn who lived in Denmark – now in Sweden – which draws on many sources. Got that? Good. Oh, and the five- piece have just released their first album in three years, the rather beautiful Lux.
Back in 2008, after putting out the
epic Reptilica Polaris, the band was ready for a break; desperate for one in fact. Then, Nyberg recalls, “we received a big grant, The Young Elite, from the Danish Arts Council and also got signed to the Westpark label. This was a great opportu- nity for us and we wanted to put out an album especially for the German market. We didn’t have enough material for a full album, but we had more than three hours of music from our older albums, so we re- recorded some favourites in new versions (on a nice 24-track analogue tape machine), together with some new tracks and that became Bastard Etno.”
They went on the road with that, and it became a party circuit, especially for Nyberg. But when the touring stopped, so did he.
“I quit drinking two years ago and started working on a new album around the same time. I’ve been very focused on the compositions, with a steady everyday workflow that’s hard to maintain if you’re hungover two hundred days a year. The ini- tial idea for the album was to make it more calm and homogeneous than our previous work. I’ve composed it as a complete album, with different chapters succeeding each other, making it a small symphony again, actually. I had this idea to not repeat anything and work it out in a more meta- morphic way. There are certainly many rep- etitions on the surface, but there is always something changing: sometimes the har- mony, sometimes the instrumentation.”
Lux also introduces Afenginn’s new bassist, Erik Olevik, who plays both electric and double bass, which “has been a great new colour on the palette. And he actually ended up playing double bass on the whole album, which calls for a different way of writing than for the electric. Yes, I’ve cer- tainly written parts for him. Many bowed string sections, some really percussive stuff and soft, wooden parts – which all are pos- sible on the double bass. There are some homages to Stravinsky, especially in Obscare, where the stabs are inspired from the fantastic ballet Sacré Du Printemps.”
So there’s the classical. What about the Nordic? Afenginn definitely qualifies. The name itself is Icelandic, and “we are a multi-Nordic band, coming from Denmark, Sweden and Finland,” Nyberg explains, “but the music is very much a result of our different backgrounds as well: rock, punk, classical, jazz, world, tango and more… There are some direct influences here and there from Nordic folkmusic: some pol- skas, polka, the typical five-beat from Finnish music. But equally there is much of Eastern Europe: odd meters, 7/8, 9/8, 11/16 and so on, as well as gypsy scales, some North African rhythms and so on. There are many different traditions being blend- ed up with classical composition, progres- sive rock and a devil-may-care attitude. We try to look forward more than backwards regarding traditions.” All bases covered.
Much of Lux was worked out in an abandoned hotel in rural Germany during a break between tours, out in the middle of nowhere.
“It was in November and it was prac- tically closed for the season. And cold. There we were very undisturbed, having to walk 30 minutes to get lunch, and the kind hotel-mutti let us use the festsaal, like a huge dining room, to rehearse in. So we set up the equipment and worked there for four days. Usually the tunes are
80 percent ready when we first start. We play the arrangements and I’ll take notes for changes, and the others come with ideas which I’ll take notes on as well. I go home and work through the ideas and come up with an updated version. So most of it is done by me, but we work on the expression, some dynamics and stuff like that together.”
“W
And now the album’s out, complete with the elaborate packaging that’s become an Afenginn hallmark.
e want the experience of an Afenginn album to be more than just the music, so the visual part is very
important as well. In these download times, which are great in many way, we want to give the ones buying the actual product something special, and I think this one is a really nice one. The CD comes in a cardboard box, and inside there is a custom made fold-yourself-box, which also works as the booklet. There are some small holes in this and when you order it or buy it at a live show, you get a small electric candle that you can place in the box, so it becomes a lamp [‘lux’ means light].”
And as the quintet, plus three guests on the album show, many hands make light work.
www.afenginn.com F 21 f
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