Amazing audio production, music played with conviction, a beautiful and wholly original composition, yet the Rökkur (ØRA FONOGRAM OF212LP) LP doesn’t quite connect for some reason on today’s spin. The Norwegian genius Maja S.K. Ratkje composed it, and it’s performed by the Icelandic Ensemble Nordic Affect, a four-piece of players equipped with baroque stringed instruments and harpsichord, while Ratkje also contributes vocals and live electronics.
Rökkur comes from the Icelandic world for “twilight”, and the project seems to be an ambitious attempt to emulate this elusive atmosphere in sound – along with other layers and resonances, bien entendu. They took the music on tour in 2024 across the nordic realms – Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland, and all the players in Nordic Affect are flawless performers – no wonder the group has been nominated for a national prize and won “performer of the year” in 2014 in the Iceland Music Awards. Maja S.K. Ratkje can normally do no wrong for me (one recent example, Vannstand, derived from a detailed study of the Norway coastline and produced beautiful music with a very strong ecological theme), so I feel I must be at fault somewhere. I’ve tried to grasp the fleeting glimpses of twilit vistas evoked in sound, and I like the idea of using elements from the past to help us understand the unknowns of the future.
The record presents both non-specific, naturalistic sounds (scored or improvised within the work) and more conventional harmonic structures, and moves seamlessly between these modes with the skill and grace we always associate with Ratkje. Yet still these replete, fascinating images remain mute, and no revelation sparks in my lumbering noggin. Perhaps there’s something so deeply “Nordic” about Rökkur, representing a culture well-known to those who have lived inside it, that it doesn’t quite travel outside this realm. Even so, there is no onus on Ratkje and Nordic Affect to be more “universal”, and indeed I would welcome any heartfelt attempt to give voice to a local, “difficult” culture in defiance of the bland, American monoculture that has become so invasive. I believe I need to spend more time with this release before I can unlock its spectral, bony secrets from its sepulchred stones. Although that mixed metaphor makes it sound rather funereal, when in fact Rökkur is alive with budding trees and new life. From 31 October 2023.