Sjofn [Enhanced]

Amazon.com
Gjallarhorn's debut made them plenty of friends with its unusual mix of Nordic folk and didgeridoo. The three years since their last disc have given them time to develop their unique sound and return with a highly satisfying album. Singer Jenny Wilhelms has learned to use her voice to its fullest, and her fiddle playing, along with that of Christopher Ohman, provides the melodic base of the band, while the didgeridoo offers an underlying drone, a technique shared by other Nordic bands such as Garmarna. Beautifully arranged, the opener "Suvetar" makes for a seductive entry into an album that constantly amazes with its depth. Like Wimme, the Finnish-based Gjallarhorn are pushing at the bounds of Scandinavian music, even including samples of dolphin sounds on the closing "Sinivatsa." There's little doubt they've evaded the traditional sophomore jinx. --Chris Nickson

Tracks:

Goddess Of Spring
Tova And The King
Dejelill And Lagerman
Intro From Jeppo-Polska
Minuet From Jeppo-Polska
Come, Holy Spirit
The Water-Sprite And The Maiden
Su Ru Ruskadirej
Mountain Haunted
Oravais Minuet
Dance A Little...
Hjaoningarima
Dolphin Calling

Amazon.com

Gjallarhorn's debut made them plenty of friends with its unusual mix of Nordic folk and didgeridoo. The three years since their last disc have given them time to develop their unique sound and return with a highly satisfying album. Singer Jenny Wilhelms has learned to use her voice to its fullest, and her fiddle playing, along with that of Christopher Ohman, provides the melodic base of the band, while the didgeridoo offers an underlying drone, a technique shared by other Nordic bands such as Garmarna. Beautifully arranged, the opener "Suvetar" makes for a seductive entry into an album that constantly amazes with its depth. Like Wimme, the Finnish-based Gjallarhorn are pushing at the bounds of Scandinavian music, even including samples of dolphin sounds on the closing "Sinivatsa." There's little doubt they've evaded the traditional sophomore jinx. --Chris Nickson

Customer Reviews:

Scandinavian folk-rock at it best.......2007-05-12

Haunting lyric driven by an almost Medieval beat that brakes into something more modern. It is a good balance, and comparison to world music from North Africa, Tuareg rock specifically.

Sjofn is the best of old and new northen music.......2006-03-20

This is a wonderful compilation of Gjallarhorn's sound. From traditional Norwiegian melodies to a Moari/Norse sound. If your looking for something new with familiarity this is a good choice

The single best ethno/folk album I've yet to hear.......2005-09-15

The title sums it all up, really.

I first saw Gjallarhorn live back in 1998, and was immediately completely zonked by the sound.
Jenny's voice is amazing, the songs are hauntingly beautiful and Martin's production is razor sharp while still sounding raw.

Above all, this album has that natural barefoot "toes in the soil"-feel that almost every ethno-fusio band misses. This is just so immediate and honest... There is zero pretention but maximun magic present on this album!

The first album is also great (I hear there is a remastered version available now since the band wasn't happy with the first version they had to make in a hurry), too bad that the third (Grimborg) moved to a maybe more artistically diverse direction, losing a lot of the natural charm and feel of serendipity at the same time...

concurring with everyone else's praise.......2004-04-01

I just want to put in another 5 star review. I am another who can truly feel the power of the Goddess in this recording. I have also seen Gjallarhorn and they are every bit as amazing in person, so I surely don't think this CD is overproduced-ths songs sound substantially the same live. This is also a good CD for testing new stereo systems because of its dynamic range.

"arise to see the seeds".......2004-01-10

This CD makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. "Suvetar," the album opener, is a 3000-year-old fertility goddess chant-song and gives off magick energy like sparks from a bonfire. From there the CD varies in intensity but never in quality. Jenny Wilhelm's voice is a treasure. It reminds me of Sandy Denny and Maddy Prior simultaneously, and she flies above the band with effortless grace while they pull and roil and flare beneath. The songs are about love in its many forms, and on the liner notes it is claimed that the goddess Sjofn (a love goddess from the Norse tradition) is the "guardian" of this recording.

Maybe that's why this music sounds so untamed and transcendent. It sounds truly pagan, not in a tacky "let's-pretend-like" sense (like so much deliberately "pagan" music) but in a fiery, direct way, tribal and present, vivid and hallucinatory at the same time.

In short "Sjofn" is one of the best "folk" recordings I have ever heard. You can spend a lot of time with this recording and still not discover every nuance. That is true of all the Gjallarhorn I have heard so far, but never more so than with this CD. Beautiful, primitive and fey, "Sjofn" is not to be missed.

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