I find the debut, self-titled LP from the Norwegian experimental project Sturle Dagsland strangely comforting. This is despite the fact that the majority of the album appears to collapse hip hop, techno, and Northern European folk into something that sounds like the secretive language of a creature that's been living on an asteroid in deep space and learning to talk by descrambling 50-year-old radio transmissions with a walkie-talkie, a bent tuning-fork, and half a roll of aluminum foil. There are times that the singer of the group, Sturle Dagsland (the band is actually comprised of brothers, Sturle and Sjur Dagsland) sounds like Anderson .Paak attempting to rap with a shock collar on, and many others when he kindles the impression of Bjork, gasping out a verse while being slowly constricted by a large python. Complimenting these prodigiously dynamic vocals are Sjur's instrumentation, which often resembles an experimental Janet Jackson single that was too outlandish for European clubs in the mid-'80s and whose master tapes were accidentally overdubbed onto joik folk field recordings and then dipped in turpentine. It may not surprise you that neither brother put much stock in established musicality and structures, or that Sturle once honed his singing skills by practicing vocal techniques with a team of Icelandic sled dogs. Put simply; I have never heard anything like this before. And I love every second of it.
I place a good deal of importance on the human capacity for creativity and my encounters with art are a consistent motivating factor in my day to day. Art contains in it the seed of an idea that work can be more than toil. That there is some breed of human endeavor that will not result in alienation- that it is to make something that can exist for its own sake- or that can exists as a psychic trapeze act, jackknifing the mental impression of one mind into the consciousness of another. What I find so invigorating, wholesome, and validating about Sturle Dagsland's music is that it feels as close as modern pop music can to this ancient dream of transcendence through creation. That through your effort and exploration, you can produce something that lives through you and which exists without an exploitable function. Something that brings someone closer to you and synchronizes their subjectivity with your own through the locus of a shared experience. This was the original function of all music, I think, and in seeking and apprehending this ancient celebration, Sturle Dagsland music rightfully acquires the denomination of "folk." So much of contemporary music is obsessed with mimicking and reproducing existing styles- and don't get me wrong, I love most music for the skill that is put to these ends. But, there is also a time to embrace what more inspiration can unlock in you than the mere desire to duplicate, and I hope the evocative nature of Sturle Dagsland's debut will have an evolutionary effect on those who hear it. I hope that it will not inspire imitators but independents. That it will not generate reproductions so much as galvanize revolutions.
