Albums

Fredrik Ness Sevendal - FNS

Richard Wink 03/06/2010

Rating: 4/5

I've considered pleading ignorance on this one. I could attempt to play up my understanding of Norwegian experimental music, talk about “drone riffs”, drop in a reference to how this music could soundtrack a hip film director's bleak masterpiece (Herzog, Lynch, Cronenberg?) but I can't pretend. Fredrik Ness Sevendal takes us into his otherworld. He does pretend.

FNS is the sound of one man indulging in the realm of fantasy. Sevendal conjures ethereal finger picking and thought provoking strums from his inquisitive, wandering hands; he then gaily splatters this against a bleak droney Tolkien backdrop. The epic 'Silence to Say Hello' takes our hero on a voyage atop a gigantic wandering guitar; I'm imagining a Gulliver's Travels like journey. Plodding through peaceful snowcapped mountain ranges, and arid deserts, the sound intricate yet menacing, veering from lazy Latin to the alarm bells that coronate a dystopian invasion. I'm a little split on this though, the track is disorientating, leaving me dizzy. I feel like a spider wandering up and down his spider web, frustrated that he hasn't snared any flies.

The rest of the release peters out into a mazy blur, from the strangeness of 'Sappelur' where Sevendal's guitar somehow transforms from a broken bagpipe into an air raid siren. The lost tribe changing on 'Dream' and 'Wooden Leg', and the ship in the distance atmospherics of 'I Think She's Asleep'.

Predominantly instrumental, profoundly engaging FNS is an enduring listen.


Release Date: Out Now