Kenneth Lien & Center of the Universe — Norwegian Electronic Folk Music

OK, everyone involved in this project, please look away after this sentence: this is not really my kind of thing. Looking away? Good. This is not great. When I first looked at the album, which arrives on a CD in a somewhat thin cardboard wallet, I thought perhaps the title was a knowing nod and I would be listening to abstract electronics of some description. When I examined the line-up and saw a mixture of traditional folk instruments and ‘drum machine, synth, sampler’ I did raise an eyebrow, but within 90 seconds of pressing play my fears had been well surpassed, and teeth were gritted.

Kenneth Lien & Center of the Universe are a duo; Lien plays traditional folk instruments - Hardanger fiddle, fiddle, mouth harp, willow flute - whilst Jørgen Skjulstad (Center of the Universe) is credited with: drum machine, synth, sampler, recording and mixing. As I said, within 90 seconds, the modus operandi is laid out, and ruder persons than I would point to that Riverdance remix or Cotton Eyed Joe.

Lien’s playing is accomplished and pleasant enough, though it’s hard to really tell as it’s boxed in and crudely regimented by Skjulstad’s beats; Lien’s work on its own would probably be quite engaging - and that’s the problem here, unfortunately. Skjulstad’s beats and accompaniments are bafflingly obvious, rote, and somewhat trite, often just dealing out entry-level variations on dub techno and trance. The album spiel states that the duo deploy traditional folk dance rhythms, and they may well do, but rather than this leading to any lithe, interesting beats it’s all rather lumpen. Largely this is due to very unadventurous sound choices, which do seem to be aimed at dance floors of yesteryear; ‘Gamle Vølin’ has a shuffling beat which combines electro sounds and acid bass squiggles, and on paper that sounds good, but the actuality is severely underwhelming. It’s entirely possible that I’m being unfair and it’s simply a case that, just as Lien’s elements would sound better separated, so would Skjulstad’s beats; there are moments where Skjulstad effectively processes Lien’s playing; ‘Gamle Teigen’, for example, which creates little reverbed drones and later adds some very effective distortion to Lien’s fiddle, and ‘Rotnheims-Knut’ which creates similar shimmering background drones from Lien’s jaw harp - but is unfortunately also the moment for the introduction of clumsy, talkbox-ed vocals. These clumsy aspects denote an album not for me, but I feel there’s a wider issue, perhaps signified by the use of dub echoes at the most obvious places: the electronic side of the album is unfortunately not very advanced. This comes to a head on the final track, ‘Håvards Sorg’, where the duo finally lurch into drum and bass territory; this is a genre perfectly capable of complimenting the rhythmic variations of Lien’s fiddle work, with rattling skeletal snares and booming kicks adding accents (I have Photek in mind here), but instead the duo present very basic drum patterns with somewhat ham-fisted snare modulations thrown in now and then.

There are brief moments where the album works well enough, the pared-back electronic drones of ‘Søtebroke’, for example, but essentially I feel like the album is either a simplified, cleaned-up transmission from the crusty trance scene of the 1990s or an adventurous Christmas present for a parent who likes folk music. That might be unfair - perhaps it’s simply not for my ears. However, the crudeness of the electronic aspects of Norwegian Electronic Folk Music do the album no service.