SOUNDTRACK: JAERV-Vol 2 (2014).
Jaerv is a folk group from Sweden who I happened to see live at a Scandinavian Festival several years ago. I’m impressed that ScanFest was able to get a band to come over from Sweden (unless they were doing a tour in the area anyway).
Their folk music is very traditional, meaning, to me it sounds like folk music from a lot of other countries as well (Ireland, for instance). But there are some distinctions. In particular the use of the nyckelharpa, an instrument that I’d never heard of but which is very cool.
The band consists of five musicians Joel Hagen: flute (flöjt), whistles, soprano saxophone (sopransaxofon) and ewi an electronic musical instrument); Anders Bergsten: double bass (kontrabass) and nyckelharpa; Harald Nilsson: guitars (gitarrer); Markus Gustavsson: fiddle (fiol) and lead vocals (sång); Tobias Hedlund: drums (trummer), percussion (slagverk), pedal organ (tramporgel), vibraphone (vibrafon). They all sing harmony vocals (kör).
There’s eleven songs on the album, most of them around five minutes long. It’s hard to distinguish them (which isn’t a criticism, it’s just the nature of the music).
“Vårfloden” (5:01) is an instrumental with lots of violin and flute. “Två Rörospolser” (4:13) is very traditional sounding with lots of flute and whistle. “Dansen Ungdom” (5:30) has lyrics. Gustavsson sings in a deeper voice. The song has a nice, lengthy flute instrumental jam at the end with an excellent four (or five) part harmony that sounds amazing.
“Av Himlens Höjd” (4:13) has nice vocals and harmonies, The song is quite grooving and there’s some amazing a capella vocals at the end–the bass voice is particularly noteworthy. “Johannas Brudmarsch” (4:46) is a slow fiddle tune.
“S:T Örjan & Draken” pushes the length to 8:04. There’s a slow opening with bells chiming. There’s complex, quiet singing and guitar. The tempo picks up but retreats until half way through when it changes into a stomping, intense song with a wild flute solo.
“E4:An” (3:46) seems like it will be kind of heavy with the opening chords, but they just work as a low bass for the lovely fiddling and then some lovely whistle. I like the time change mis song. “Rosa-Lill” is another short one at 2:56. It’s a bouncy folk song with flute melodies and nyckelharpa throughout. “Rocken Snurrar” (3:21) starts a capella with the harmonies creating the music while the lead vocal sings. Then they harmonize in the chorus. This one is super catchy with great vocal harmonizing and surprising glockenspiel solo.
“Slängpolska” (4:56) is an instrumental jam with lots of fiddle and flute. I like the percussion throughout. “Tre Engelskor” (5:02) ends the album very traditionally with some ripping violins.
I met the guys after the show and they were all very nice. They signed my CD which is always a nice thing to do.
You can hear the whole album here.
[READ: May 29, 2021] Gung-Ho
This is one of a few books by Ablaze Publishing that I read recently.
I really enjoyed Thomas von Kummant’s art style. The pages looked very painterly, with cool washes of colors and juxtapositions of colors rather than shading. The characters were also almost entirely distinctive *there are a lot of characters). There were one or two who looked a little to alike, but for the most part this heavily populated story was very easy to follow who was who.
Set somewhere in Europe (I wondered if this was written in German–I don’t see a translator, but he does live in Munich [UPDATE: according to a catalog record, the book was translated from the French by Ivanka Hahnenberger]), we come upon an outpost. It is heavily guarded. The people are heavily armed and they all kook pretty dirty.
Cut to a train hauling cargo and two teenage boys, Archie and Zack on top wearing prison orange. They were kicked out of their orphanage and sent here. If they can’t make it here, they are on their own.
The town has a strict hierarchy and strict rules for safety. All provisions are divvied out based on need and on who kills the most (we don’t know what they’re hunting, yet). We also see that the guy who divvies out the provisions isn’t above getting himself some teenage girl action for extra supplies (ew).
Indeed, many people in town have a problem with him, but he was sent by the military and is above questioning.
There are 400 people living here including many teenagers. The boys almost all follow this one leader who is a jerk. There are a few who don’t follow him and one in particular befriends Zack. There’s also a bunch of girls who seem to hang out together and maybe or maybe not fool around with the bad boys.
The boys do not like Archer and Zack, but the girls sure do–they are hunky and very good with weapons.
Archer is the more troublemaker-y of the two and he finds himself in a few bad situations (one of them with one of the girls). Meanwhile Zack is the quieter one and is kind of picked on by the other boys.
We also see that there’s some resentment between the leaders of the community and the guy who doles out the provisions. They know he’s skimming from the top but he’s untouchable.
So just what are they protecting the community from? We don’t find out until page 70 when we see the creepy-ass, white, killer monkey creatures that savage the land. They are blood thirsty and very deadly. And in that first attack, some characters die and Zack proves that he has a lot of courage (and foolishness).
There’s some solid backstory between the characters and the world is really fleshed out. Although there is no explanation of why the rest of the people are there–or if the rest of the world is intact. But you don’t need that for this story and it’s not missed.
Then two new characters approach–walking in no-man’s land, which is unheard of. They are martial arts star Tanaka Hasegawa and his daughter and his daughter Yuki. They are both martial arts masters and made it to the village after their train was attacked by the creatures.
They have been sent to replace one of the murdered characters, to take over military training. Yuki’s pretty hot, too, so there will be conflict there, I’m sure.
The book ends with the boys chasing Zack and Yuki who have left the compound on his motorbike (for an ill-advised joy ride). But while they are out there they are attacked. Someone is killed and punishment must be meted out. The finals scenes in the book are somewhat cryptic–Zack’s expression could mean many different things.
I got really invested in this story and will certainly look for book 2
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