Trondheim Voices + Asle Karstad — Rooms & Rituals
The CD comes in a fold-out six-panel mini gatefold- and I must say it’s one of the original & classily beautiful bits of CD packaging I’ve seen in some time. The gatefold its self-has a dull & plush matt dark grey finish- on top of this we a get a series of silver spot printed shapes dotted over the whole sleeve. Then underneath is a simple moody blend of monochrome pictures of the choir in a circle, & weaves of light grey geometrical shapes. I’ve really not seen anything quite like it before, and it’s always nice to see when a label goes the extra mile to create something distinctive like this .
The album takes in twelve tracks- and each of these run between just over a minute and nearing six minutes. Over the length of the album, a lot of different sonic ground, moody & track structure is covered- we go from simplistic ribbons of soothing ambient harmonizing, onto complex & at times rhythmic layers of ethnic-like-vocalizing. Through to slowly twisting sonic canvas of whooshes, ticks, whistles, sighs, and breathing. Onto weird high pitched & theatrical storytelling over old hag mumbles, deep drilling tones, and pained mouth noises. Through to more folky & richly traditional vocalizing, onto soulful wails & yelps.
In a way the amount of variety on display here works against the album as a whole- as often it feels there is a lack of both focus & consistency of atmosphere. Sure it’s great to hear the scope & variety of the choir's range, but at times it feels like there’s not enough structure & composition going on here. That said when it does click, and you come across a track that gets the balance right between composition & use of sound- the results are most spellbinding indeed.
I really wanted to like Rooms & Rituals more than I did, as the possibilities of the human voice in this type of subtle real-time manipulation is vast. But ultimately I came away feeling it was a worthy experiment, that could have been just a bit more focused & consistent.