As part of my preparation for festivals, i invariably spend time beforehand with music that’s directly related either to where i’m going and / or to what i’ll be hearing. In the case of the recent World New Music Days, this involved revisiting a lot of music i encountered during and after my first visit to the Faroe Islands five years ago, but more importantly catching up on what had been going on more recently. So as an epilogue to my extensive coverage of WNMD, i’m going to explore one or two of the highlights of what i discovered. It should be stressed at the outset that, considering the size of the Faroes’ population, the sheer quantity of music being produced there is mind-boggling. Much of it is channelled through, and released by, the country’s primary record label, Tutl; it doesn’t take long perusing their website to appreciate both the scale and the diversity of the music-making, encompassing classical, avant-garde, rock, folk, electronic, jazz, punk, pop and much else besides.
One of the fascinating traits of Faroese music-making, as i’ve discussed several times before, is the way these diverse genres are treated as complementary, such that the country’s most interesting music is stylistically highly fluid, sometimes manifesting as episodic music that veers between genre types (Kristian Blak’s larger-scale music often does this), or bringing them together to create something more stylistically hard-to-define. One such album was released last year, and i wish i’d been aware of it at the time, as it’s undoubtedly one of the best things i’ve heard from 2023: …eftir by the group Klingra.
A sextet comprising a mixture of guitars, synths, electronics, trumpet and percussion, Klingra evolved from a previous group, Afenginn (whose latest album was actually called Klingra), with the intention of focusing on a more quiet mode of expression, one that starts “from a point where all extraneous matter seems to have been pared away”. On their debut album …eftir [after], this is channelled into music that, for all its beauty and ostensible bliss, is rooted in melancholy. At its core is a tragedy that befell a group of German fishermen in 1956, when one of their boats sank off the coast of Greenland, resulting in 14 of them losing their lives. This is related in two passages spoken by the grandfather of Klingra’s lyricist and vocalist Dánjal á Neystabø. The rest of the album provides an extended reflective context for these words.
The group’s name, Klingra, is a Faroese verb meaning to circle or revolve, which is an apt term in light of the way …eftir is structured. Its two halves have a distinct circularity to them: indeed, the second could be heard as a revised version (even a mirror image) of the first. Furthermore, the four parts that make up each half display a similar circularity, continually returning to and revising earlier ideas, such that everything sounds fundamentally interconnected, flowing and unfolding as a single, 42-minute unity.
There is quietness to be found on …eftir, but something that characterises the album as a whole is low-key, slow-burn swells, each of which starts almost nonchalantly, initially not showing any signs of where things will end up. Take the opening track, appropriately named ‘Í fyrstuni / In the Beginning’, where Neystabø’s word-play lyrics are a halting foreground in the midst of a reverberant ambient wash, in which voices and guitars are far-off, blurred presences. The following track, ‘ein tøgn / a Silence’, immediately shows that circularity i mentioned, being essentially both a continuation and a reflection of this, focusing on its distance vocalise, eventually building to a climactic reprise of its fragile central verse: “You are reflected in everything / like a stream / gushing through / the cracks / in the drought”. The other side of this swell is a return to the wash, though its softness is lightly blanched by a haunting, hard-edged melodic echo.
While the grandfather speaks (‘Í kuldanum / In the Cold’), the music takes a respectful step back – just bare chords floating in space – before responding to his words with a guitar meditation over light, muffled beat shapes. The first half of …eftir concludes with ‘trøllslig ró / Ghostly Peace’, where Neystabø’s voice is rendered uncanny with some delicate autotune, only making him sound yet more poignant (and at times bringing to mind Jónsi). Gradually, Klingra fill out the texture, singing is replaced with vocalise again, and the track becomes increasingly robust and rock-like, building as a slowly rotating object where pain is transmuted into beauty. When the rock trappings abruptly fall away, we find ourselves back somewhere akin to where we started, a place of hovering vocals and ambience, closing with squelching electronics and sombre, muted piano accents.
These accents return at the start of the album’s second half, ‘Í dropanum / In the Droplet’, in the midst of droplet sounds. A continuation, going forward? A mirror image, going backward? The reality, as i mentioned, is that this second part is a kind of revised version of part one, with a subtly different sensibility and trajectory. Melody – as fragile as ever – appears at the outset, but is initially directed into music that seems surprisingly inert, almost innocuous or indifferent. An emergent guitar solo, more earnest than the one in ‘Í kuldanum / In the Cold’, provides impetus to begin the track’s transformation. Harmonies roam and expand, and the entire texture attains a level of transcendent glory not only completely unexpected in this track but hitherto unheard on the album. It’s a burst of effulgence that only makes what follows all the more tragic. The group recedes – practically vanishes – save for a lone piano, while the grandfather concludes his sad story, relating how the bodies of the men were recovered by Faroese workers at the fishing village in Greenland. His words yield to exquisite soft vocalise supported by quiet strings, agonisingly touching, allowing time for the emotional weight behind the words to speak.
The aftermath of this, ‘í øllum / In Everything’, is a return of the words from the opening track, only now infused with energy and vitality, their melding of negative and positive now tilted toward the latter. …eftir ends simply with ‘ein endurspeglling / a Reflection’, a piano restating the main melody from earlier, becoming the basis for a final homage to those who were lost: “You are in the droplets / that drizzle from the fog … What is the beginning / When the ending turns in / And wraps you / In thankfulness?” The music turns circular again, stately and solemn, filled with reverence and understated intensity. It serves as an echo of all that’s gone before, in some ways (as earlier) bringing us back to where we started – both the start of this half and the start of the album as a whole – yet also leaving us somewhere very different, transfigured.
This should have been (and, had i kept my ear on what was happening in the Faroes better, would have been) very high on my Best Albums of 2023. …eftir is supremely wonderful, conveying an authentic, heartfelt, passionate response to a long-distant tragedy, revivifying not just memories but the people themselves. i couldn’t be more excited to hear what Klingra do next.
…eftir is available on CD and vinyl direct from Tutl. The digital version is available from Bandcamp and the usual places. It’s worth noting that the four principle tracks – i.e. the ones that begin and end each half of the album – have been made available as singles (including, importantly, all of the lyrics) available from Bandcamp as free downloads, but these songs really need to be heard in their proper, larger context. There’s also a video for one of the tracks, ‘Í dropanum / In the Droplet’, available on the group’s YouTube channel.
