A first encounter with Eplemøya Songlag isn’t easily
forgotten. Seeing them in Oslo a few years ago left an indelible impression.
A trio, they used no instruments. The vocals were
wordless. There were some subtle treatments of the voices: a touch of reverb.
Rhythms came from the voice, but this wasn’t a tripled-up human beatbox. When
the vocals – rounds, soaring passages, whispers – were punctuated, it was with
sharp exhalations like hammer blows or bubbling. Arresting and powerful, yet
tonally shaded, it was utterly memorable and unlike any other music.
The arrival of their second album, Möya Og Myten, brought the opportunity to check in with Eplemøya
Songlag and find out about their world. Although bracketed as folk, they breach
musical boundaries, setting their own style.
Eplemøya Songlag are Liv Ulvik, Wenche Losnegård and
Anja Eline Skybakmoen. Each is solely credited with vocals. Liv’s background is
in folk, while Wenche and Anja come from jazz.
Möya
Og Myten goes further than their 2011 eponymous debut album
as it captures the impact of their live shows. Being all in Norwegian brings no
barrier to being bowled over. Translated as Maiden
and the Myth, the album collects songs about women. Mostly allegorical, but
still direct, they address perception and place. Some are arrangements of
traditional material, some bring melodies to poems. Others are new
compositions.
Helpfully for non Norwegians, the new album’s
booklet has short English-language summaries for each track – on both the background
and genesis of each song, and its narrative. It’s not strictly necessary to
know that Huldresong is about the huldra (the hulder), a siren-like,
forest-dwelling mythical woman with a cow’s tale who lures men to her cave (who
also crops up Swedish and Sámi stories). The song is quite spooky enough
without knowing the meaning of the words. In Olav Og Elvarkvinnene, Olav has a
fateful encounter with female elves while riding off to invite guests to his
wedding. The newly composed Kvelerslangen carries a warning about a python. Even
without any knowledge of Norwegian, Möya
Og Myten is a pleasure as it’s so atmospheric, so powerful.
Stylistically, Eplemøya Songlag draw on Norwegian
kveding singing. “Liv has studied the kveding,” explains Anja. “Her way of
singing, combined with two jazz singers, becomes something new and fresh. The
three of us have very different musical backgrounds and very different voices,
and we sing together with that in mind. The difference between us is important.
We look at our different approaches as a strength. We use these differences as
much as we can to reach a result that everyone is satisfied with. We both try
and want to bring out the best and most special in all three voices.”
Although the stories on Möya Og Myten look to the past, Eplemøya Songlag take care that
they still resonate. “We find the Norwegian music tradition, with its bizarre
stories and beautiful melodies, very enchanting,” says Anja. “It´s important to
us that the stories we pick are somewhat relevant for our lives today. And many
stories are. On Möya Og Myten, we
searched for old myths, urban myths and mythical characters in traditional
Norwegian history and culture. We used about a year to find the right stories
and melodies for us. We search online, in archives at the libraries, talked to
story tellers here in Oslo and so on. On our first album we searched for
stories about strong women taking responsibility of their own lives no matter
what. For example, the story about the girl who didn´t have a man. She was so
desperate to find a man that she eventually made herself a man out of branches
from trees and intestines from one of her dead sheep. And this self-made man
was as good as any other man. That´s something to think about.”
The music is as exacting as the search for subjects
and songs and, especially live, sounds difficult to create. “Our main goal is
to maintain an acoustic sound,” says Anja. “If we use microphones on stage, we
always try to reach the same sound as if we were singing with no amplification.
Because our repertoire is challenging when it comes to voice technique and
register, we often need microphones to get the details in our music out to the
audience.”
As to whether the music of Eplemøya Songlag is folk
– or not - Anja says “our music is a kind of folk, I think. But it´s not so
important that we label our music. We have three feet in folk music. But the
other three are set somewhere else - inspired by Bulgarian women´s choirs,
jazz, world music, vocal styles from other countries and cultures. As long as
we can perform these stories and this music that we love, we´re satisfied.”
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