01	Kapten Kapsyl (Captain Bottlecap)						02:59
	02	Bambodansarna (The Bambo Dancers)						04:20
	03	Borjar Du Fatta (Do You Get The Picture?)						04:28
	04	Shapons Vindaloo						05:12
	05	Nitti Pomfritti (90 French Fries)						07:20
	06	30-Ars Jiggen (30-Year Jig)						02:20
	07	Anno 1643						03:30
	08	Tartulingen						04:36
	09	Sald Och Solde (Sold Or On Sale)						04:03
	10	En Timme I Ungern (One Hour In Hungary)						05:11
	11	Till Farmor (To Grandma)						02:46

Whirled by Vasen


Now a four piece (with percussionist Andre Ferrari), Vasen leap into the forefront of the vibrant Nordic world music scene with Whirled. For the first time, all of the compositions are original, although they wear their Swedish traditional roots plainly and proudly.

Vasen carries its brilliant acoustic ensemble interplay to new levels on this recording, with a contemporary energy and attitude that is rarely found in acoustic bands. The combination of nyckelharpa (keyed fiddle) and viola is propelled by guitar and hand percussion, with tunes that are irresistible and unforgettable.


"Lively percussion and hyper-folk instrumentation characterize this intriguing quartet... As with seemingly all of the NorthSide releases, the common theme is energetic delivery, clever arrangement, a sense of humor and a singular ability to contemporize folk instrumentation and themes." -- CDNow




Vasen
Whirled
Northside Records, 530 N. Third Street, Minneapolis MN 55401
Release Date: 1997

If I were to pull you aside and say you gotta hear what Vasen does with a kamelklocka, a kontrabasharpa and a chromatic nyckelharpa, you'd probably think I hung out at that cantina in Star Wars with dudes whose eyes sit atop tall scaly stalks. You'd be wrong. Billions of people have heard the sounds of George Lucas' wacky alien disco, but I doubt many people south of Lapland know a thing about Scandinavian folk music.
I know I didn't, not until Vasen's Whirled showed up in my mailbox. As a confessed country junky, what hooked me first was the abundance of fiddles and other fiddlish noises. Apparently -- and I'm no expert on this subject -- a chromatic nyckelharpa is some sort of fiddle with keys. Whatever it is, it is a central ingredient in this remarkable confluence of interwoven sounds. If you absolutely insist on a comparison to some more "mainstream" artist, try a less-noisy Dirty Three or less-dramatic Rachel's or even Camper Van Beethoven at its wildest moments -- though none of those parallels are entirely convincing. Vasen manages to mix in the exuberance of a square dance (or maybe a klezmer band), and even the dark, folksy spiritualism of a Tchaikovsky symphony or a Russian novel.

What distinguishes Vasen on the world musical stage is the band's emotional nimbleness. These are not "sad" songs or "happy" songs, they are both, and without a single word they tell the complex and contradictory stories that we think and feel but can rarely express. For example, the dizzying heights of "Bambodansarna" strain to push themselves above a halting bass line, but when the joyous melody collapses, that same bass part, solid and pure, is there to break the fall. Then there's the delicate "Nitti Pomfritti," which, like a Brechtmovie, builds with a slow, quiet confidence. But talking about individual songs misses the point; this is an album-lover's album, mood music of the highest order, and while the Scandinavian folk-music scene is a long way away for the average American listener, it's still well within our reach.

-- Chris Schwartz
schwartz@outersound.com








VASEN - Whirled

Northside Records

I was suspicious and worried when I first heard that this phenomenal trio of keyed fiddle, viola and guitar from Sweden had expanded to a quartet with the addition of a drummer. A drummer? With Roger Tallroth's percussive guitar as the bottom for the band, with Mikael Marin's complex underpinnings of viola, with Olav Johansson's incredible nyckelharpa playing, what would they need with a drummer? I had visions of them developing yet another "folk-rock" hybrid that sounded mostly like everything else I had already heard. A drummer? And one named Andre Ferrari?

Well, the tight, complicated arrangements and percussive drive are still there on Whirled, and the addition of Ferrari is in fact yet another stroke of good fortune for this interesting band from Sweden. This album offers some of their best compositions yet, and they clearly have composed at least some of them with the new musician in mind, offering little hints of more eastern music to filter into their already successful mix of jazz, traditional folk and medieval tones. In fact, it's Ferrari as composer on "Shapons Vindaloo," a very Mustapha-esque Arabic journey, that pulls all of the mentioned elements together very effectively in a very contemporary sounding acoustic tour de force. They do traditional styles beautifully, as in Tallroth's "Thirty Year Jig" which expands nicely with the addition of a frame drum, or Marin's humorous instrumental "Nitti Pomfritti" (90 French Fries), where the clunking wood percussive describes the drunken footsteps of a post-debauch late night stroll.

The key to the sound of this band is still in the nykleharpa, a keyed drone fiddle that Johansson is an acknowledged master of. It is this instrument that adds the mystery to the music, and his dark, rolling "Tartulingen" exemplifies what Vasen is all about, a merging of times and styles that is singularly Swedish and uniquely their own. - Cliff Furnald